Hulu’s Theranos, The Dropout, is still in the works for the streaming service but it’s officially swapping out actors for its starring role. The Hollywood Reporter shared on Monday that Saturday Night Live standout Kate McKinnon won’t be playing tech startup founder Elizabeth Holmes, an actress/role pairing that had many excited about the show when it was first announced.
Instead, Amanda Seyfried will take over and play Holmes, while also serving as a producer after McKinnon left the role last month:
Showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether (New Girl), Liz Heldens (The Passage), Liz Hannah, Katherine Pope, podcast host/ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis, Victoria Thompson and Taylor Dunn exec produce. The series is from Searchlight’s TV division and 20th Television. Seyfried will also be credited as a producer on The Dropout.
Seyfried replaces McKinnon in the role. The SNL Emmy winner departed The Dropout last month. The series was poised to begin filming after the NBC sketch comedy favorite wrapped its current season in May. A casting search began immediately after McKinnon dropped out of the series. The Dropout was one of two series McKinnon had lined up outside of SNL. She remains set to star in and exec produce NBCUniversal’s Joe Exotic series, which is earmarked for a 2022 debut across NBC, USA and streamer Peacock. McKinnon signed on to The Dropout before boarding Joe Exotic.
The Dropout is based on an ABC News podcast about the Theranos scandal, one of several other media productions that followed the enigmatic Holmes in recent years. Holmes, whose quest for medical millions was also chronicled in a 2019 HBO documentary, The Inventor, has been a big topic in innovation-obsessed Silicon Valley and Theranos’s rise and fall. Overpromising on a miracle blood diagnostic device that basically never worked right, Theranos was as compelling a pyramid scheme as you could imagine in the tech world, so no matter who plays Holmes there will be considerable interest in the fictionalization of the story. But we’ll have to wait and see if Seyfried can match the Theranos founder’s infamous voice, which may or may not be put on for show. Even after all these shows, you see, there’s still some mystery to be solved here.
(Via Hollywood Reporter)