As depicted in The Dropout, Elizabeth Holmes built her doomed blood-testing start-up Theranos, valued near $9 billion at its height, on technology that never existed. But it wouldn’t have collapsed the way it did without the bold efforts of whistleblowers Erika Cheung and Tyler Shultz. The Hulu series focuses largely on the rise and fall of Holmes, played by Amanda Seyfried, but midway through, Erika and Tyler, played by 13 Reasons Why’s Dylan Minnette and newcomer Camryn Mi-young Kim, get their own spotlight as a pair of Theranos employees who quickly realize something is wrong from within. They coordinate their efforts to get in touch with reporter John Carreyrou, and in Erika’s case, she eventually files a complaint with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The series is Kim’s first TV role, and she spoke with Vulture about the daunting prospect of joining the star-filled cast, thinking about Erika’s story as a compare-and-contrast case with Elizabeth Holmes’s, and learning about the joys of craft services.
In the finale, Erika tears up on the phone with Carreyrou after he calls to tell her he knows she submitted the complaint about Theranos. What was filming that like?
That felt like a culmination of a huge emotional and traumatic life event for the real Erika. Putting her name on that letter came with a lot of risks. It wasn’t something to be done lightly, especially as someone who did not know how Theranos would come after her. She didn’t have the same...
; ; ; A foreigner who was granted refugee status in South Korea after claiming persecution in their home country for being a sexual minority now faces the loss of their refugee status as most of t...