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While Amanda Seyfried may have lost her Wicked role to Ariana Grande, she ended up taking a role that won her an Emmy. Amanda may have an assortment of memorable roles under her belt, but playing Elizabeth Holmes may take the cake. That tends to happen when an actor plays a real-life person and absolutely knocks it out of the park. And with her recent Emmy win, it's fair to say she does just that with the controversial Theranos CEO.

During an interview with Vulture, The Dropout's showrunner, Elizabeth Meriwether explained how she cast Amanda and the rest of the actors in the acclaimed limited series. She also revealed how Amanda found Elizabeth's famous low voice and managed to find a shred of empathy within her.

How Amanda Seyfried Was Cast As Elizabeth Holmes

The Dropout is not only based on an incredible and terrifying real story, but also on a podcast of the same name. While the podcast is good in its own right, Elizabeth Meriwether's limited series is downright excellent. Aside from the writing, much of that has to do with Amanda Seyfriend's performance.

Originally Kate McKinnon from Saturday Night Live fame was supposed to play Elizabeth Holmes. After she dropped out, Amanda was brought in.

"The scripts didn’t really change. Kate had gone into the project wanting to play the character dramatically, and when Amanda came, the tone didn’t change," Elizabeth Meriwether explained to Vulture.

Related: The Disappointing Way Fans Treated Amanda Seyfried After Mean Girls

"We were pretty close to shooting, but looking back, I don’t know how we got so lucky. Her performance, even after being in editing with it — I’m still surprised by things she did."

Will There Be A Dropout Season 2?

Amanda Seyfried has been very vocal about wanting to reprise her role as Elizabeth Holmes. But showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether believes the series has concluded.

"I keep telling [Amanda] that I will not be writing a second season!" Elizabeth claimed. "She actually texted me [recently], 'I hear you’ve started working on a second season'. She’s messing with me a little bit. I would love to work with her and all the people who worked on this show again, but this story has gone as far as I want to go with it."

Amanda Seyfried's Finds Elizabeth Holmes' Low Voice

Nailing the low register voice is everything when it comes to play Elizabeth Holmes. It's safe to say Amanda mastered it. And without a doubt, her best scene is when she is practicing Elizabeth's voice in the mirror.

Related: 'The Dropout': The Truth About Elizabeth Holmes' Lowered Voice?

"That was actually a reshoot," Elizabeth Meriwether said to Vulture.

"We’d shot something that felt like it wasn’t having as big of an impact emotionally. The original scene was much shorter, and I was glad we expanded it and let her go for it. That scene was one of the last things she shot as the character. Michael Showalter, the director, talked about the fact that her voice wasn’t a joke and was an important emotional part of the character. That scene was the climax of that story. It’s when her self is splitting apart."

Finding Empathy For Elizabeth Holmes

It may be easier to find empathy in a horrible character than it is in an actual human being. Part of that is just good storytelling. In order to bring this character to life, Elizabeth Meriwether and her writers needed to give Amanda enough material to work with to form a somewhat sympathetic yet odious individual.

"Writers would come in like, 'I really understand why she did this,' and others would be like, 'But this is the horrible thing that happened because of what she did.' We were always having those conversations. I hope that’s reflected in the show," Elizabeth stated.

Related: The Truth About Amanda Seyfried And Thomas Sadoski's Private Relationship

"I don’t want people to walk away from the show with a verdict on her or a diagnosis. Everybody I talked to when I was working on this wanted to label her a sociopath. There’s a desire to push her away, and I wanted to tell the story in a way where, in the moment you’re watching it, what she’s doing makes sense. But then, when you take a step back, you’re forced to reckon with the fact that you understood what she did."

Casting The Dropout

Aside from Amanda Seyfried, The Dropout is filled with talented faces such as The Sandman's Stephen Fry, 13 Reasons Why star Dylan Minnette, Shameless' William H. Macy, and Law & order's Sam Waterston. But there's also a slew of comedic actors peppered in there, like Utkarsh Ambudkar, Laurie Metcalf, and Michaela Watkins.

"It was a constant conversation with our casting director Jeanie Bacharach and Hulu about whether we were going too far into the comedy world with casting," Elizabeth said to Vulture.

"I felt, and I still feel, that really great actors play the moment. Some of the funniest aren’t doing 'comedy.' We should try for a joke and see how it feels and then pull back on it if it felt like we were going too far. One of the amazing things about Amanda is that she has the sense of play that a comedy actor has and isn’t afraid of trying something completely different."