Amanda Seyfried’s series, The Dropout, begins on Hulu this Thursday. The photo above is from last week’s premiere. Amanda is wearing Oscar de la Renta. I love the fabric and the color, but the superpuff detail and very low neckline looks like it’s weighing it down. The series is about Elizabeth Holmes and her mess with Theranos. I’m a fan of Amanda’s and the cast is great so I may check it out. Holmes’ story makes me so angry though.
Amanda swung by Jimmy Kimmel Live! in person to chat. While she was there, they talked about her love of pranking her friends, which is something I didn’t know about Amanda. She started off big, admitting to dressing in a bear costume and hiding in the woods to scare her poor husband – OMG! But most of her pranks sound much milder and pretty funny. Her go-to is filming her friends while they’re looking at their phones and sending them the videos. And then she films their reactions.
She pranks people by recording them and then sending it to them
If I see someone on their phone and there’s a place to hide I’ll go hide pretty far away and zoom in and video them for at least a minute. Then I’ll send it to them to disorient them. They’re gonna get it. You send it to them and then you record them getting it.I did this to my friend Eli. He was outside of the barn eating something that was way too big for his mouth. I videoed him for three minutes. I sent it to him. He was like [looks around]. I have the video of that too. I f’ck with him a lot. It’s a gift to them, it’s not the meanest thing. There’s always some kind of shame or guilt when someone gets caught on their phone, but we’re just doing what everybody does.
On playing Elizabeth Holmes
I came from a compassionate angle, but also I was just fascinated. The perfect analogy I heard was she had jumped off a cliff and was trying to build her parachute before she got to the ground.
I love pranks. I’m not the best at pulling them off, but I feel like I could do this video thing. The problem is that the only people I really prank are my family. And it won’t work because my kids never check their texts from me, and my extended family all live in different cities. I love how Amanda thinks it’s a gift for her victims because she sends the reaction videos to them. That’s prank logic for you, “no, see – you like it!”
I like Amanda’s comments on how she approached Elizabeth Holmes, too. Actors usually try to find the humanity in their character or something sympathetic, so they don’t look overly opportunistic for wanting to portray them coughawardbaitcough. But I can appreciate becoming fascinated with a person who’s buried so deep in their own sh*t, it’s hard to tell if they can smell it or not. And I like Amanda’s analogy about the parachute as well. Only in Holmes’ case, there should be a line about how she stole the rip cords from someone else when she found out hers didn’t work.
Photo credit: Getty Images, Instagram and YouTube
