“Saturday Night Live” cast member Kate McKinnon bowed out of “The Dropout,” an upcoming Hulu series chronicling the Stanford dropout’s startup that promised to do broad testing from a small drop of blood, but was later revealed not to work. (Deadline)
Talking point: Meanwhile, Holmes’s trial for fraud is set to begin in July. She and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who was once the company’s president and chief operating officer (and her romantic partner), face 11 charges. The U.S. government alleges the pair defrauded investors, doctors and patients by promoting Theranos’s inaccurate lab services. They face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Last year, a court reduced the charges levied against, but did not throw out the case. Theranos’s former laboratory director is expected to testify that the company’s leaders pushed back against his evaluation that the technology was inaccurate. This week, Holmes’s lawyers fought against the prosecution’s attempts to use her upper-class lifestyle and expensive purchases as evidence. Her attorneys said they have nothing to do with motive and could invoke class prejudice.