Kate McKinnon Leaves Hulu’s Theranos Series The Dropout

Saturday Night Live and Ghostbusters: Answer the Call veteran Kate McKinnon has stepped away from The Dropout, Hulu’s planned series about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. McKinnon, who was set to start as Holmes and executive produce the miniseries, had been attached since it got a straight-to-series order from Hulu almost two years ago. The series will move forward without her, with Deadline reporting that the plan is for production to start in the summer. There is no word yet on who will replace McKinnon, who is set to play another truth-is-stranger-than-fiction role when she appears as Carole Baskin in Joe Exotic, based on the events related in Netflix’s Tiger King documentary.

Holmes was an engineering wunderkind, who dropped out of Stanford to found a healthcare technology company which she said would change medical science. Offering a low-cost, quick-turnaround alternative to traditional blood testing, Theranos was poised to make everyone involved incredibly rich while also providing a concrete service to the world.

Unfortunately, the company was built on lies and fraud, with technology that never worked and falsified results which were either entirely fabricated, or tested through traditional methods and passed off as the results of the new technology. Holmes and others at the highest levels of the company faced charges for fraud and conspiracy.

The Dropout launched as a podcast in 2019, just a year after Theranos executives were indicted. It was so successful that ABC News told the story as a two-hour documentary on 20/20 that same year. The TV version of The Dropout is set to be executive produced by the podcast’s host/creator Rebecca Jarvis, along withproducers Taylor Dunn and Victoria Thompson.