Nathan Fielder has been taking a lot of heat for Season Two of The Rehearsal, mainly due to a recent Variety interview with one of the participants of the show’s fake singing competition, which may or may not have been a calculated act of revenge by Paramount. Others have called the show “ethically murky” and “cruel.”
While it may sometimes feel as though Fielder is putting unsuspecting normies through a gauntlet of embarrassment purely for his, and the audience’s, amusement, there is something genuinely sincere about the core premise of The Rehearsal. That’s because the show is arguably a way for Fielder to process his own struggles with anxiety, albeit with the occasional discussion about Albert Einstein’s fuckability.
Back in 2013, just as Nathan for You was first getting off the ground, Fielder spoke very candidly about himself during an interview on Bill Simmons’ podcast The BS Report. Fielder, who at that point was mainly known for appearing on Jon Benjamin Has a Van and the Canadian news parody show This Hour Has 22 Minutes, remarked that since “no one in America knows who I am,” he was “mentally preparing” himself “for the worst,” in terms of audience criticism.
“It’s weird that I have a TV show,” Fielder noted, “because I hate being on camera. And I’m not comfortable putting myself out there. Which is weird in a way. I don’t know why I keep pitching projects with myself in it. It’s stupid.”
Simmons seemed borderline shocked by this “bizarre” statement, questioning how Fielder is able to seem “totally comfortable on the show.”
“When I’m on the show, and I know what I’m doing it for, I have a certain goal in mind, and I’m trying to create moments with people that are funny, I can go into that zone fairly easily,” Fielder explained.
When asked if he was “playing a character,” Fielder revealed that he was essentially playing “an old version of myself,” adding that “off-camera and growing up, I had a lot of difficulty in social situations. And I would panic and I wouldn’t be able to really communicate properly. And also I couldn’t read subtlety that well. So if someone didn’t like me, or liked me, or thought I was nuts, it would be hard for me to tell.”
Viewing The Rehearsal in this context gives the show a slightly more autobiographical quality. While the “Nathan Fielder” character is obviously awkward, his creator was at one time sensitive, insecure and unsure of how to act in social situations. The whole premise of The Rehearsal requires focusing on subjects who are similarly uncomfortable putting themselves out there. The very first episode was literally just about a guy needing to have a chat with his trivia team.
Fielder having a history of not being able to “communicate properly” is noteworthy, considering that the second season is predicated on the idea of improving person-to-person communication, but in one of the few circumstances where lives actually depend on social rapport.
Fielder has frequently said that his comic persona was achieved by dialing his own social quirks up to 11, but it’s worth noting that his past anxieties were seemingly alleviated when playing a fictionalized version of himself. This is literally one of the exercises that Fielder has Colin the co-pilot try in a recent episode, pretending that he is a character during his date with Emma.
Creating a false reality to play around in theoretically enables The Rehearsal’s introverts to gain confidence, whether it’s asking someone out on a date or speaking up to prevent an airline pilot from causing the fiery deaths of hundreds of innocent people.
Obviously some of The Rehearsal’s plot points have been more conspicuously inspired by its star’s personal hang-ups, not just the Paramount+ saga, but the first season found Fielder working himself into the show and playing out a domestic family life that wasn’t really his.
The Rehearsal may seem cruel and detached at times — and maybe it is — but it’s also deeply, often uncomfortably personal.
