'The Dropout' Is Finally Introducing Us to the Heroes Who Took Down Theranos

Mar. 15 2022, Published 12:35 p.m. ET

As we get deeper into Elizabeth Holmes’s story in The Dropout, Hulu's latest restricted collection, the main points get more and more convoluted. With a deal between Theranos and Walgreens taking up, positive characters are changing into more prominent in taking down Holmes, and Kevin Hunter is front and middle.

In The Dropout, Kevin Hunter is the scientist Walgreens consults to examine Theranos’s Edison gadget — and he isn’t quiet about his skepticism. So, what’s going to occur with Kevin Hunter in The Dropout? If his character is anything like his real-life counterpart, Hunter, played by way of Rich Sommer, will likely be central in taking down Theranos.

In reality, Kevin Hunter used to be probably the most early Theranos skeptics who helped convey the company down.

So some distance, The Dropout has very effectively reflected what took place in reality between Hunter, Holmes (performed by way of Amanda Seyfried), and Theranos as a whole. As depicted in the Hulu sequence, the real-life Hunter was hired by way of Walgreens to take a look at Theranos's tech, simply to ensure it worked. But understanding it didn’t work, Holmes and her partner-in-crime, Sunny Balwani (performed through Naveen Andrews), did everything they might to stop Hunter from in fact seeing the tech.

In one trade in The Dropout, Elizabeth convinces Dr. Jay Rosan that since Hunter worked at Quest Diagnostics, he would attempt to steal Theranos’s corporate secrets. This in reality took place in reality too, with Holmes and Balwani going even further to forestall Hunter from stepping foot anyplace throughout the Theranos construction with out supervision.

Hunter defined in The Dropout podcast, “They would literally walk us to the restroom after which walk us again in order that we weren’t round to look around or talk to anyone… Sunny would literally stroll me to the restroom [and] wait outdoor the toilet door for me and walk me again.” This is abnormal habits — we let elementary school children move to the toilet by themselves however Theranos can’t allow the similar for full-grown adults? It’s an unheard of level of distrust.

Since Holmes never let Hunter take a look at the Edison device at the Theranos headquarters, he was most effective able to tinker with it when he were given his fingers on a machine that was once already at a Walgreens. “I by no means got it to do anything that became out a test end result which may be correlated with anything,” Hunter reiterated in the podcast.

He eventually determined to depart Walgreens to steer clear of damaging his reputation, and contributed to John Carreyrou's scathing book that took down Theranos. Now, Hunter is the CEO, president, and managing spouse of Colaborate, a “full-service laboratory consultancy.”

Rich Sommer portrays Kevin Hunter in ‘The Dropout.’

The Dropout takes the already-dramatic tale of Elizabeth Holmes and brings it to lifestyles. The amusing part in regards to the series is that the actors are able to seek out some humor in the suspenseful tale. Through their performances and Michael Showalter's course, the irony of the occasions that took over the sector (Elizabeth Holmes was once the youngest self-made female billionaire at one point) are dropped at the leading edge of the story.

Rich Sommer as Kevin Hunter makes this irony all the more obvious because Hunter knew that Theranos was once fraudulent all alongside. The actor is also a familiar face to many people. We acknowledge him as Harry Crane in Mad Men and as Mark Eagan in GLOW, however he’s been acting on display since 2004. He even had a small section as Anne Hathaway’s persona’s buddy, Doug, in The Devil Wears Prada.

Obviously, Kevin Hunter is very different from Sommer's Devil Wears Prada personality, however Hunter's significance in the downfall of Theranos makes him just as amusing for those of us staring at at house.

New episodes of The Dropout drop each and every Thursday on Hulu.

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