WIRED Editor Reveals Behind the Scenes of Her Interview with Nathan Fielder on His New Documentary
WIRED global editorial director Katie Drummond told the Uncanny Valley podcast how her secretly arranged interview with comedian Nathan Fielder came about. It covers his documentary "You Can See Everything," about Elizabeth Holmes.
In the latest episode of Uncanny Valley, the podcast of US technology magazine WIRED, global editorial director Katie Drummond described how she came to interview Canadian comedian and TV creator Nathan Fielder. The conversation focused on his new documentary, "You Can See Everything," which he made with co-director Lance Oppenheim. The interview ran as a WIRED cover story.
A film kept secret for three years
The film follows Fielder as he spends a month in Elizabeth Holmes' home in the weeks before she went to prison. Holmes was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors through her blood-testing startup Theranos; its promised fast, accurate tests turned out to be fake, and the technology did not exist. The film was kept under wraps for three years, and only a few dozen people saw it before its debut at the Telluride Film Festival.
Drummond said Fielder's publicist contacted her to ask whether WIRED could put him on a cover. Details were shared only after she signed a nondisclosure agreement (NDA), and only then did she learn it was a film. She admitted she first wondered whether WIRED might be pulled into a joke, but it soon became clear this was a sincere effort to get Fielder to do press, something he rarely does.
A difficult conversation
According to Drummond, Fielder dislikes being interviewed and said so during the talk. He did not want to share his views on the film's subjects so as not to shape how audiences see it, and instead put questions to her. The interview lasted almost an hour and a half and avoids spoilers.
Drummond said that after the interview she reconsidered the film and changed her mind about something she had said: in her view, the filmmakers' point of view is in fact visible.
Other topics in the episode
The episode also covers Anthropic's pledge to commit 5 percent of its shares to a public benefit fund, Elon Musk's promise to give every child in America one SpaceX share, and a WIRED investigation finding that election offices in at least 32 US states received suspicious letters, some with white powder, two weeks before the midterms.
