Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - March 6, 2022, Winnipeg, Manitoba A9SUNDAY, MARCH 6, 2022 C M Y K PAGE A9 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM ARTS ● LIFE I LIFESTYLES Days after writing those words, Hefner, who is vice president of the nonprofit Hugh M. Hefner Foundation and was not interviewed for the A&E series, announced on Instagram that she would be writing a memoir about her time at the mansion. “I’ve been on the fence about telling my story be- cause it’s complicated and conflicting in ways,” she wrote in her post. “One of my therapists (yes I’ve seen many to try to make sense of it all) said ‘it’s like you went trick or treating at a house and then wasn’t let back out for 10 years.’ It was kind of like that.” Theodore, meanwhile, is considering purchasing “a dark wig and sunglass- es” for fear that she might be recog- nized even at the local grocery in her small mountain town. “I don’t think anybody wants this kind of fame,” she says through tears. “Why would I throw myself under the train and expose things that are so humiliating and embarrassing? It’s all alive to me again. I can smell the mansion. I can smell the different rooms. But that’s maybe a good thing, because it keeps me resilient. It keeps me determined to get the truth out. He can’t hurt me anymore. And I don’t want any other girls to fall prey to a man like him. He may be gone, but there’s always a man like him coming up around the corner.” The day before Secrets of Playboy premièred in January, Theodore re- ceived a call from a woman in Boston. The stranger told Theodore that during a trip to L.A. at 19 to do a test shoot for Playboy, she was sexually assaulted at the mansion. Over the phone, the two women cried together. Such connec- tions — and her friendships with Masten and Garcia — fortify Theo- dore’s intent: “We’ve come together to get a very important message out. And we couldn’t have done it without each other.” Masten, a retiree who lives in Naples, Fla., with her dog, says her doctors and attorneys have encouraged her to stay off social media. She already sees a therapist for her post-traumatic stress and anxiety disorders, and she’s trying to maintain her health as best she can. Garcia too has kept away from her Facebook account. But she has trouble comprehending why those with positive memories of Hefner can’t reconcile the fact that others had negative experi- ences with him. “Nobody else was Miss January 1973. Nobody sat behind the desk as director of Playboy promotions for six years except me. Listen to the experiences I had. Give me that respect,” Garcia urges from her home near Sacramento, Calif. “To be fair, I think that Hefner should be known for the incredible work that he did with civil rights and the First Amendment — although he didn’t respect our rights. No one is per- fect, but his imperfections — they’re monstrous. And those things need to be added to his legacy. Let’s pull it all out — everything out of the dirty drawer — and find out who the man really was. The women have not been free to speak before. None of us are healed. None of us. And we’re hoping that this docuse- ries will do something towards that.” — Los Angeles Times D E AR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I was so looking forward to getting out with a few girlfriends for live music and dancing again. It’s been two long years for me! But, as the night progressed I started to feel anxious. Everyone was wearing their masks and following social distancing in the beginning, but as the night wore on people were coming up to our table with their masks under their chins, asking us to dance. I started to feel so uncomfortable I wanted to leave. My friends told me I was “overreacting.” I said, “Yeah?” Then I got up and left! Do you think I was overreacting? — Unpopular Decision, The Maples Dear Unpopular Decision: Unmasked folks who are huffing, puffing, laugh- ing, sitting close together and dancing, have the ability to spread their droplets far and wide. Avoidance of big social groups still makes more sense for you. The Omicron variant isn’t as deadly, but it’s easier than previous COVID variants to spread. Many people get sick, and some still die. People may have come in those club doors intending to be masked, then had a few drinks and said, “To heck with this. Other people have their masks off!” Alcohol loosens people’s inhibi- tions and social pressure is strong for people who want to fit in. You didn’t bow to your friends’ pressure this time, but it will get harder. Instead of dancing, invite a good pal or two out to lunches and dinners. Then wait and see what transpires COVID- wise in the next month or two. Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: “My wife loves to carry babies, and I love to make babies!” That’s one of my favourite lines and it usual- ly gets a laugh. The trouble is we now have four kids under the age of 10, and that’s more than enough for me. The love of my life wants a No. 5, but I already have to work hard to support her and the four kids now. Also, I don’t get to see my growing children enough, as I have to work so much. Secretly, I think she’s afraid that if she isn’t busy with a new baby I will push her to go back to work. She hated working outside the home. She doesn’t believe me when I say I can afford four kids but not five! She says, “You have a great job. What’s the problem?” Please help. — Losing Battle? Westwood Dear Losing battle: Go over the finances with your wife, so she can see the picture clearly. Then address her fear that she will have to go back to working outside the home. Let her see how close you are to not having enough money to support another child, but that you could make it with four — and she could still stay home. Also talk about your desire to spend more time with the young kids you already have. As a good mom, she will appreciate that sentiment. More open communi- cation on all fronts — financial and personal — will help. Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6. Don’t feel pressured to rejoin the crowds MAUREEN SCURFIELD MISS LONELYHEARTS PLAYBOY ● FROM A8 Dropping voice key to role in The Dropout AMANDA Seyfried is leaning into her computer’s camera for an impromptu tutorial. When it was announced that she would be playing disgraced Silicon Valley darling Elizabeth Holmes in a new Hulu limited series, most of the focus was on whether she could convincingly mimic Holmes’ famous deep baritone. So, how did she do it? “Keep your tongue flat in the back — like, flatten it over the back of your teeth,” she says, disapprovingly yet en- couragingly, her wide eyes narrowing with focus as she observes me stum- bling over these vocal Pilates. “It’s funny, this is the first time I’m describing it like this because it became so natural,” she says, slipping in and out of the Holmes voice for emphasis. “I was used to it as a muscle memory. So yeah, it’s deeper. It’s like a kind of Valley girl almost.” Based on the podcast of the same name, The Dropout tracks the rise and fall of Holmes and her biomedical company, Theranos. Seyfried portrays Holmes from her days as a Stanford student with Steve Jobs-level ambitions to her time as the enigmatic wun- derkind who founded a blood-testing startup that promised to revolution- ize healthcare with its ability to run hundreds of tests on just a few drops of blood — and was ultimately exposed as a con artist who bilked investors and patients by pushing technology that didn’t work. At Theranos’ zenith, Holmes became known for her personal style, which seemed poised for mythmaking. Like Jobs, she adopted the black turtleneck, though she preferred pairing it with black pants rather than jeans and punc- tuated the monochromatic look with bright red lipstick. Her blond hair was usually ironed straight or pulled back into a messy chignon. But no aspect of Holmes’ persona has fed into the public’s fascination more than what may be its most peculiar aspect: her deep voice. Its authenticity has been called into question, with some alleging that the founder affected a lower tone to sound more authoritative while selling inves- tors and the public on her company. In The Dropout podcast, former co-work- ers of Holmes said that she occasion- ally slipped out of her deep, low voice and spoke in a higher pitch. Her family has denied claims that it’s fake to TMZ. The limited series takes the position that it’s part of the ruse. Seyfried’s take on Holmes’s distinctive voice comes barely a minute into the first episode of The Dropout, during a scene where she’s participating in an interview well into Theranos’ rise. But the narrative quickly journeys back to Holmes’ pre-Theranos, pre-voice origin story. It’s not until the third episode, Green Juice — which explores what it means to be a young woman in a position of power — where its genesis is dramatized. And the transformation is anything but automatic. Liz Meriwether, the showrunner of the limited series, wanted the situation to dictate when Seyfried’s Holmes leaned into the uncanny pitch. “That was something we consciously talked about — the voice is tied to the context [in which] it’s used,” Meriweth- er says. “We sort of made the decision that when she is in a public setting, when she’s around a lot of men, when she is being asked to be a leader, that’s when her voice really deepens. Then for the for the rest of it, it was like: Let Amanda play the scene and let it happen naturally. I didn’t want her to be thinking about it. I told her early on that getting it ‘perfectly right’ was not interesting, was not important to me. I was much more interested in the emotion of the performance.” That didn’t stop Seyfried from putting in the demanding vocal work to try to match it, and under a tight schedule. Seyfried was tapped to play Holmes around this time last year after Saturday Night Live star Kate McKin- non pulled out of the project. Seyfried had three months to study for the role. Getting it right was important to Seyfried because “people are always talking about the voice. It’s the first thing people mentioned. Second is the turtleneck; third is the non-blinking. But the voice is No. 1. The voice is the foundation. If you don’t, it’s like you’re missing the whole thing.” “I went full force into finding out everything I could,” she added. “There was this huge [encyclopedia], that’s still actually on my desktop, of all the information that had been collected over the two years of research during the development phase of The Dropout … The thing that really helped with the voice and how that evolved for me was the deposition, because it was so many hours, and I could just play it on loop. I had them all on my desktop, little thumbnails. And I’d be sitting at my desk — at that time, my son was really, really young and he wasn’t mobile yet so it was a lot easier when my daughter was at school to just crochet and listen, or to just write things down. I felt like I was really doing homework, I was really studying. I was most excited about that, than any homework I ever had to do.” T HE actress is video chatting from her home in the Catskills in upstate New York, joined by her Aussie-border collie mix Finn, who is lounging nearby. He’s heard plenty of Seyfried’s test runs as she found Holmes’ voice. Her farm animals even got a taste of it. “I would like feed the goats in the morning and be like, ‘Good morning. Today, I’m, uh, going to get through this, uh, mixture of some mineral,’” Seyfried recalls, transitioning into the Holmes voice, something she did often during the conversation. Seyfried would sometimes send her friends videos or voice memos that she recorded of herself speaking as Holmes at a TED talk or trying to sell something she dreamed up while driving for long stretches. And while Seyfried beams while talking about her fascination with voice work — “I’m a mimic. Sometimes I’m a good mimic, sometimes I’m not. But the more I hear someone’s voice, I can take it on” — she’s cautious to temper any expecta- tions of a flawless Holmes imitation. “It evolved into my version of it,” she says. “Because I know I’m not her twin, I’m not her, I’m not a clone of her. I needed to get it right and I needed to make sure that I could sustain it.” While she didn’t work with her vocal coach, Liz Caplan, for this project — their collaboration tends to focus on singing — Seyfried did seek her advice early on because she was worried she was causing damage to her vocal cords. “I would be talking like Elizabeth and (my throat would) get a little sore,” Seyfried says. “And I’d be like: this can’t happen. Like, this is freaking me out. Am I going to be able to do this for weeks? We worked together as much as we could. Sometimes we’d have to work together on weekends because I was auditioning for a musical. But, yes, at first I was f— scared.” Seyfried describes Holmes as “ruthless, impenetrable and lost.” And figuring out the voice allowed Seyfried to do more than sound like Holmes — it brought her alter ego into focus. (Because of Holmes’ ongoing litigation, which resulted in her conviction on four counts of fraud earlier this year, Seyfried was unable to connect with her subject.) “I think she didn’t feel like she was good enough on her own,” Seyfried says. “I think she felt like she had no choice but to make choices early on about how she was going to appear to the outside world, how she was going to deal with starting this business. In our show, it’s not like she was figuring out ways of speaking while she was in school. It all happened when she start- ed this company. She needed to be the big bad boss. And there were certain elements to that that I think she under- stood to be really impactful, which is like, deepening your voice. “Every choice she made was very deliberate at the time she made the choice. But I don’t know how deliber- ate it was at every single instance. I mean, when you start doing something enough times, it starts to become second nature — for all of us. She got on this train and it’s moving and she’s not getting off and she’s gonna work harder and faster and need more and get the job done at any cost. Did she need the voice? Maybe not. But I think she felt it was necessary.” Whether or not it was necessary for Holmes, Seyfried’s fascination with her runs so deep that she’s held onto the voice. “I still sometimes talk like her,” Sey- fried says. “It’s hard to shake.” — Los Angeles Times Seyfried put in hours to emulate disgraced entrepreneur’s vocal affectations YVONNE VILLARREAL BETH DUBBER / HULU From the bright red lipstick to the black, turtlenecked monochrome outfits to the deep baritone voice, actor Amanda Seyfried literally became convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes. A_09_Mar-06-22_FP_01.indd 9 2022-03-05 6:00 PM ;