The Dropout true story: Elizabeth Holmes scandal explained

It also stars the likes of Stephen Fry and Naveen Andrews, but how much does the series stick to the real-world events. What in the series is fact, and what is fiction?

Read on for everything you need to know about the true story behind The Dropout.

Who is Elizabeth Holmes?

Holmes is the founder of a health technology company that became known as Theranos.

The saga begins in 2002 when Holmes began a chemical engineering degree at California's prestigious Stanford University, where she soon began dreaming up ideas for radical new inventions. The first was a patch that would attach to an individual's skin and routinely scan the body for infections, automatically administering antibiotics whenever necessary. An interesting idea in theory but physically impossible to execute, Holmes was informed by Professor of Medicine Dr Phyllis Gardner, but she seemingly disregarded the academic's expertise as an underestimation of her ability.

Holmes dropped out of Stanford before her sophomore year to focus on her new business Theranos, which would be based around a similarly ambitious and potentially revolutionary piece of technology. She used the remainder of her tuition money to fund research into a device that would require just a single drop of blood to perform dozens of health tests, including those that identify serious conditions such as cancer and diabetes.

What did Elizabeth Holmes promise at Theranos?

Promising fast, accessible and affordable blood testing in a country with an infamously high cost of healthcare, it's not surprising that her invention – the Edison – had so much interest from investors. Meanwhile, the powerful narrative that Holmes spun alongside her pitch would soon have the world's media fawning, with particular attention being paid to her public image as a young woman dominating in business, while sporting a similar style to that of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

“We see a world in which no one ever has to say, ‘If only I’d known sooner’. A world in which no one ever has to say goodbye too soon,” said Holmes at TEDMED 2014.

Unfortunately, this almost utopian promise was never anywhere close to becoming reality because the Edison machine simply didn't work as advertised.

What happened to Theranos?

In 2015, the Wall Street Journal began a damning investigation into Theranos led by reporter John Carreyrou, which kick-started the chain of events that would bring the entire company down. A number of departed employees felt uncomfortable about Theranos practices, but most had been reluctant to come forward due to the threat of legal action from the $9 billion company. An unexpected whistleblower who became instrumental to Carreyrou's report was ex-Theranos research engineer Tyler Shultz – grandson of American businessman and former Secretary of State George Shultz, who at the time was one of the strongest advocates of Holmes and her company.

Carreyrou's initial report revealed that the supposedly revolutionary Edison was not capable of running as many tests as Theranos had claimed, with machines from rival companies being used instead in some cases. To make matters worse, the reliability of the proprietary technology was deemed questionable, with cases including a pregnant woman given results that wrongly indicated she had miscarried and another individual who received a false-positive HIV test. Fellow whistleblower Erika Cheung would later testify that the Edison results were roughly as accurate as tossing a coin.

The Wall Street Journal coverage led to an avalanche of questions and mounting pressure on Theranos to be more open about their closely guarded techniques. Shortly after, an investigation was opened by the regulatory Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and one year later 40 per cent of staff were laid off as the company restructured. In 2018, Holmes was ousted from the company and accepted a $500,000 fine, with criminal fraud charges following that same year.

The trial was delayed by Holmes' pregnancy and the COVID-19 pandemic, but finally got underway in September 2021, with a jury finding her guilty on four counts of defrauding investors four months later. There was no verdict on three additional counts of wire fraud against investors, which were subsequently dismissed by the government, while Holmes was also found not guilty on four counts of defrauding patients. Still, it was a spectacular fall from grace for the woman that Forbes once described as the "youngest self-made female billionaire" on the planet.

An extract from the SEC report reads: "Innovators who seek to revolutionise and disrupt an industry must tell investors the truth about what their technology can do today – not just what they hope it might do someday."

On 18th November 2022, Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison, and she surrendered to custody in Texas on 30th May 2023.

Balwani was also tried in relation to his involvement in the company, and found guilty on all counts, including two counts of conspiring with Holmes, six counts of defrauding investors and four counts of patient fraud. He was sentenced to 12 years and 11 months, plus three years of probation. He surrendered on 20th April 2023.

Outside of the workplace, Holmes and Balwani were also romantically involved for more than a decade, with their relationship being a major focus of drama series The Dropout – despite showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether admitting there is relatively little about it on public record.

"I think the storyline that is the most dramatised is the Sunny Balwani/Elizabeth Holmes relationship, just because we had almost no information about that," she told RadioTimes.com and other press. "And so a lot of that is just me taking what I thought I knew and writing scenes, trying to make sense of it. It's very much not a documentary.

"When I did go away from the facts, there was a reason and I tried to make it an informed decision. I think that if I had just been presenting the facts, then I wouldn't be doing my job because you could just watch the documentary [HBO's The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley]."

Which characters are real people in The Dropout?

Most of the characters featured in The Dropout are real people involved in the true story, although there is one notable exception in Theranos in-house lawyer Linda Tanner, played by Michaela Watkins.

Speaking to RadioTimes.com, Watkins described her character as a fictionalised "amalgamation" of the legal team who worked for the tech start-up, but her performance still drew some inspiration from real footage taken from its now-closed headquarters.

"The way I sort of stepped into her body," she began. "The moment that I said, ‘OK, yes, I think I know who Linda Tanner is’... I watched the documentary and there was one woman, I don't even think she was a lawyer, but it just hit me about what the culture at Theranos might have been. I think it was one of those things in the bullpen where everybody was celebrating the moment that the FDA approved one aspect of their testing capabilities.

"And they were playing Pump Up the Volume and I saw this woman just sort of dancing like she was part of the cult, like drinking the Kool-Aid. And I thought that's who she is: she's someone who is so excited to be on the winning team."

The Dropout is available to stream on BBC iPlayer and on Disney Plus, and is airing on BBC One from 10:40pm on Tuesday 19th March 2024.

Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on.

Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only £10 – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.