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Regardless of the premise of the show he appears in, his main objective is to conform within society and discover genuine human connection.

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From a first glance, this image present no remarkable or distinct features of Fielder. We struggle to pick up on something out of the ordinary. Not only his clothing, expressions, and pose are generic, but also his facial features are unmemorable.

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It is likely to forget the name of someone like that. Likely to lose in a crowd. One might even call him a human equivalent of pastel IKEA furniture.

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However, this seeming simplicity is carefully crafted and maintained by the interplay of three characters behind the name of Nathan Fielder.

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Fielder owes a large portion of his notoriety to his parody reality TV series Nathan for you (2013-2017). In his own words, Nathan, the businessman is occupied 'with out-of-the-box and unique marketing strategies to help [small businesses] to make more money'.

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By attempting to appear normal and relatable Nathan uses body language and demeanour accordingly. However, this behaviour makes it seem forced and awkward. He clearly notices how normal people look, move, and act but is unable to convincingly replicate that himself.

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Nathan Fielder on Instagram: "Took a photo of me sharing a Valentine's Day kiss with my girl but framing was off lol oh well 🙄"

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41K likes, 1,728 comments - nathanfielder on February 14, 2017: "Took a photo of me sharing a Valentine's Day kiss with my girl but framing was off lol oh well 🙄" 

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This post and the one to the right perpetuate the recurring joke that Fielder has no friends or lovers.

He claims in the caption that they are out of frame.

Which is possible, of course.

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Nathan Fielder on Instagram: "Out on the town having the time of my life with a bunch of friends. They're all just out of frame, laughing too."

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25K likes, 2,480 comments - nathanfielder on July 11, 2015: "Out on the town having the time of my life with a bunch of friends. They're all just out of frame..." 

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14K likes, 1,236 comments - nathanfielder on July 22, 2016 

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In a sense, the writer's recent appearances show him as a more mature and serious person. The last upload of his rarely updated YouTube channel is a video about Fielder producing an experimental show. Its creator John Wilson discusses his creative process of filming bread whereas the writer expresses his indifference to the project. Surprisingly, the writer for once seems actually most normal and sane in the room.

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How To With John Wilson: Anatomy of a Scene - The Bread Scene

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The writer speaks about supporting young talent in the same video. Apparently, he invited four teenage TikTok dancers to live cost-free in his house in exchange for working hard to better society (making TikToks).

The teenagers describe their household in flattering ways and yet they seem to be lying for some reason. The clips of them hanging out with the writer look unnatural. And as one of them says 'it's his house, so it's his rules' we are treated with a clip of the writer casually pulling out a gun.

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Fielder gifts Seth Meyers, the host of a talk show, an envelope as a token of appreciation for promoting his show. Meyers discovers 40 dollars in it. It makes both him and the audience laugh.

From this interaction, the audiences understand that Fielder is familiar with the convention of giving gifts in exchange for favours. However, his gift is uninspired and impersonal. Furthermore, a person of Meyers' status and notoriety is likely not to get aided financially by a mere 40 dollars.

Hence, the joke Fielder, the writer produces is based on the knowledge of social conventions and failure to implement them in his own interactions.

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Nathan Fielder Gives Seth a Generous Gift - Late Night with Seth Meyers

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Most of Fielder's talk show appearances were marked by his signature dead-pan jokes, making self-referential jokes about the mundanity of his off-screen interests. His personal life was not so interesting and he could not think of anything other than his two cats and love for boiled eggs to talk about.

In opposition to those appearances, his second-time feature on Late Night with Jimmy Kimmel saw Fielder at his most charismatic as he told a captivating story of a particularly exciting run-in with police.

Audience members were baffled:

How did he become so charming?

Did his life somehow become interesting?

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Nathan For You features an investigator Brian Wolfe in four episodes. Their highlights are compiled in a clip from a Comedy Central YouTube channel.

These episodes give insight into numerous characteristics of Nathan, the businessman.

Every screenshots below is from the Youtube clip

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The Best of Nathan’s Private Investigator  - Nathan For You

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Wolfe gives one of the most iconic lines used to describe Fielder by his fans - wizard of loneliness. The name as well as the extended quote - ''you know what you are? you remind me of the wizard of loneliness. you have no friends. that's why you're the wizard of loneliness" - has been printed on different types of apparel as well as notebooks and is available for purchase.

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Wizard of Loneliness.

This unisex t-shirt is 100% cotton. The shoulders have twill tape for improved durability. The collar is made with ribbed knitting to prevent curling damage.

* 100% cotton
* Runs true to size

Learn more about this item

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Nathan Fielder Wizard of Loneliness Nathan for You the - Etsy UK

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This Gender-Neutral Adult T-shirts item by ExistingSucks has 294 favorites from Etsy shoppers. Ships from United States. Listed on 27 Sep, 2023

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Time and again Nathan, the businessman either disregards the opinions of business owners he tries to help or narrates about their indifference or opposition to his ideas as if they were supported

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Nathan, the businessman's perception of himself

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Nathan, the businessman's perception of himself

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Nathan, the businessman hires eight actors that 'are identical' to him and instructs them to take note of his speech and mannerisms. The only idiosyncrasy he could come up with is his unusual jaw movements.

This strengthens the notion that his persona is rooted in the ordinary

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Nathan instructs the double he deems the best to embody him fully by cleaning his house.

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Nathan convinces the double to switch lives for the day, takes his car and heads towards the double's house with a bottle of wine and flowers he gives to the double's fiancée. He also brings condoms.

After being asked to leave the house, Nathan decides to give up on his plan to hide from the investigator. This decision implies that many schemes from the show merely act as a pretext for ulterior motives.

In many cases it is the search for intimacy.

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Nathan takes Wolfe's insults about his appearance to heart and tries desperately to win him over. He devotes a different episode to assemble a focus group that would help him 'become a more likeable host' and 'the guy that everyone loves'.

Nathan implements the focus group's recommendations for facial gestures, body language and fashion advice without question. It seems to work with some people.

Wolfe, however, rejects his 'new personality' about ten seconds into their second interaction.

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The comedy of this episode rests on the fact that a weird guy who follows the advice of normal people on being normal people becomes even less normal

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Fielder's failure to be sociable is relatable to fans not only intrinsically, but also because such concept is common and well suited for the self-mocking style of humour of the late 2010s.

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Nathan Fielder Stan Account on Instagram

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1,686 likes, 14 comments - unhingedfemale3 on September 20, 2022 

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Needs for being loved and liked are universal, albeit the immense and overtly expressed anxieties are mostly linked to Generation Z and millennials who compose the majority of Fielder's audience.

These social anxieties are remedied by an AWKWARD, detached, ironic and absurd sense of humour that is also typical of Fielder himself.

His continuous failure to conform and find connection embodies his viewers' fears and makes him highly relatable

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Most liked comment of the video says 'I was in crutches once too'. The comment is as dry and unspecial as the video itself.

Fielder's mundane experiences and the awkwardness they sometimes present are very human and connect well with audiences.

This speaks to the detached humour typical of the past and current decades.

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Nathan, the writer - the real Nathan Fielder to the public - stays in character on his Instagram. Much like Nathan, the businessman, he also promotes normality: appears unglamorized, often sleepy or unshaven and engaged in everyday activities or struggles like being on crutches

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Fielder's relatability garners a strong connection to his viewers who generate Fielder-based discourse online in ways like (but not limited to) tweeting, making gifs, posting on Instagram or Reddit, making YouTube compilations.

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Nathan Fielder was named one of the 100 Time Magazine's most influential people. His name appeared in the list's 'Innovators' category and was nominated by Emma Stone, his co-star in the up-coming Showtime original TV series The Curse.

We choose to end our discussion on Nathan Fielder's star image with an image that, more so than any other, confirms his stardom.

We believe that the main characteristic of stardom is exceptionality. Being an unconventional example, Fielder tries to hide his uniqueness and in doing so becomes a relatable character for an anxiety-driven generation.

However, individuality emerges no matter what. Because of that, paradoxically, someone merely trying to fit in can become a universally acclaimed and influential, one-of-a-kind innovator.

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Nathan Fielder finds society fascinating-more than a comedian, he's an observer of human behavior. In his shows like Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, he mines the absurdities of how people relate to one another and how he relates to them, and it all makes you think, laugh, then think some more. There's no one like him, which is something people say about their friends, but it's especially true of Nathan. His work stays with you.

On our new show The Curse, I watched him move fluidly between directing, writing, acting, and producing, all while editing The Rehearsal. It was a staggering feat. Working with him as a director is fantastic because he's obsessively detail-oriented, but never loses sight of the big picture. And he's a truly amazing actor. He could burst into tears or a fit of rage out of nowhere, and it was stunning because it all felt so honest.

But our relationship isn't super gushy, so please don't tell Nathan I said any of this.
Stone is an Oscar-winning actor
Contact us at letters@time.com.

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Nathan Fielder: The 100 Most Influential People of 2023

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Find out why Nathan Fielder is one of the 100 most influential people of 2023.

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When I lived in New York City more than a decade ago, the comedy scene included a group of mostly improv performers dedicated to pulling off large-scale public pranks. Sometimes this took the form of flash mobs, and other times it was based on a simple premise, like a group of redheads protesting the Wendy's mascot for its harmful depiction of their people, or a reading by Anton Chekhov at a Union Square bookstore...despite the fact that Chekhov has been dead since 1904. It was often hilarious.

Two particular pranks stick out in my mind, though, mostly because they were featured in an episode of This American Life in 2005. In the first, the group's leader picked out an unknown band from Vermont who would be performing late on a Sunday night in New York-a set of circumstances that guaranteed there would be very few people in attendance-and assembled a group of 35 people to pretend to be superfans. They screamed, they danced, they yelled the lyrics in unison, and the band had absolutely no idea what was happening, but eventually embraced the rockstar treatment and had their best show ever. In the second prank, the leader of the group and a few followers picked a person at random in a bar, addressed him as "Ted," and pretended it was his birthday. They bought him drinks, gave him presents, and told old stories about their time together. When he showed them his license, they'd laugh it off, and when he tried to leave, they'd insist he stick around for one more drink.

Both of these premises are, on some level, funny. They're also incredibly cruel, and they had the negative effects you might imagine. The band were furious, then humiliated, and one member in particular who had been bullied as a kid felt that he was reliving the worst parts of his childhood just as he thought he had come into his own. "Ted," the birthday boy, was sensitive to begin with, and the night made him frightened and paranoid that they might come into his life again-a paranoia that felt justified when the group's leader called him exactly a year later on his fake birthday to ask how "Ted" wanted to celebrate this time.

This was bad enough, but on the This American Life episode, the leader of the group was insistent that these were positive experiences in the life of the victims.

"Regardless of how he feels about it now, I do know that that night was awesome," he said of the birthday prank. "Whatever you say, you had a blast that night."

He was similarly cavalier about the band, saying, "Is it cruel to give somebody the best day of their life just because they'll never have another day like that again? And I don't think so."

I had taken improv classes taught by this man, and watched him perform, and considered him both talented and a nice person-at least to me. But when I found that TAL episode, my opinion of him changed, and whether it was fair or not, I saw something sinister in him. If he was being disingenuous about the consequences to his prank victims, that was bad enough, because it meant he was hurting others for his own gain (his company later had a television pilot) and didn't really care. But if he really believed those experiences were positive, it was somehow worse; it meant he was comfortable playing god, deciding how they felt, and dismissing them if they disagreed.

I thought of this recently after I read the excellent Vulture feature on Nathan Fielder, the genius behind Nathan For You and the new HBO show The Rehearsal. Fielder is different in many ways from my former improv teacher, in that he puts himself at the forefront of his work and is after a deeper comedic experience that contains some commentary, if you look deeply enough, on the most superficial aspects of our culture. But when asked about a woman who felt badly about how she was portrayed on his show, he sounded basically the same.

"It kills me any time I hear people didn't like their experience," he said. "I remember her being very excited about it."

This was incredibly strange to read, because one of the chief byproducts of Nathan For You was the humiliation of its subjects. It may not have been the show's purpose, or its main comedic engine (those were the premises themselves), but it was so fundamental to the final product that when you hear Fielder express surprise that anyone might have felt badly, the only possible reaction is cynicism. How can he not know what he does to these people? And if he's lying about not knowing, what does that say about him and his work?

In a way, it would almost be more refreshing if he admitted that yes, people got hurt, but that this was part and parcel of his art.

In my experience, if you watch enough comedy over a lifetime, it gets harder and harder to truly laugh. There are many shows I really enjoy which almost never make me laugh, just because I've overdosed to such an extent that the bar to actually elicit a real laugh is stupidly high, like an addict who needs greater and greater quantities to get the buzz he needs. There are a small handful of shows that can still do the trick, and Nathan For You was one of them. Not only that, it made me laugh the hardest. I want to be extremely clear about that: when I write about the show's cruelty to its subjects, those thoughts are coming afterward, on consideration. In the moment, I'm helpless to the absurdity, and Fielder's interactions with other people, and the bizarre lengths he'll go to follow his premise to its logical conclusion, are uproarious.

The Rehearsal isn't as blatantly and irresistibly funny as Nathan For You, and that's on purpose. Like his first show's infamous finale, "Finding Frances," he's after something a bit more experiential, emotional, and perhaps even meaningful. Make no mistake, though-he's still manipulating the hell out of every possible scenario, chasing narrative threads to their ridiculous ends, and showing an almost unbelievable proficiency for unearthing America's weirdest people. In other words, when he wants to be funny, he's still very, very funny.

He's also still mean, and the meanness is also still funny. A necessary part of the Nathan Fielder experience is trickery to elicit the participation of his subjects. In Nathan For You, business owners thought someone was coming to help them turn a profit. In The Rehearsal, the governing concept is that if you have to make a hard decision in life, or hold a difficult conversation, what better way to ensure success than to practice over and over and over in the most realistic simulacrum of the eventual moment? It's an idea that vaguely makes sense on the surface, but Fielder quickly turns it all profoundly stupid on a magnificent scale. He builds an exact replica of a bar in advance of a tough conversation over pub trivia, he has a woman raise a child from infancy to 18 on a 30-day timeline, substituting actors of various ages at fast intervals to simulate the growing process, and even the minor details get the Fielder treatment; if someone wants to have a vegetable garden, they'll make it, and even bury fully grown vegetables in the ground to be plucked if there's not enough time for them to grow before filming is wrapped. It's a testament to the need to control everything, and a pretty astute commentary on the futility of that approach to life.

Again, though, there are casualties here. Some of the subjects are highly unsympathetic; there's blatant anti-Semitism from one man, and the woman at the center of the child-rearing project is somewhere beyond insufferable. It's tempting to let yourself slip into the mindset of believing that it's okay for them to be humiliated, and that maybe they even deserve it.

But do they? It's one thing for a person to get his or her comeuppance in life, and we all enjoy those moments. But to have it happen on television, in service of another man's art, is where things get tricky. This is the most public thing that will ever happen in their lives, and they'll likely never do anything that resonates on anything close to this level to the world writ large ever again. Not only that, but they're being tricked by armies of HBO apparatchiks armed with forms to sign, lured in by the promise of fame, placed in bizarre situations that no human could possibly know how to cope with, and then having their experiences over days and months edited down to minutes to highlight certain moments in order to create the exact impression that Nathan Fielder wants. Even for people who come off like assholes, that feels like a different level of mean.

I'll be the first to admit that cruelty can be very funny. In a show like Veep, the characters are heinously mean to one another, and though some viewers find it too unpleasant, I think it's brilliant. But those are fictional characters. The people in The Rehearsal are real, and they have to live with their portrayals at the hands of someone who-even if he wants to claim otherwise-doesn't really care.

I don't even know if this is a bad thing, and I mean that honestly. At times, I feel I'm being weak or censorious to even feel these qualms. It could be that Fielder's work is so smart and so incisive that it justifies the fallout. I don't know who's qualified to judge something like that, but it's certainly not me. All I know is that when it's over-after I've laughed, and after the fascination with a singular artistic experience has worn off and I have time to think-the feeling that remains is one of deep conflict. The admiration for Fielder never goes away, but something else creeps in to exist alongside that admiration, and it doesn't feel great.
Shane Ryan is a writer and editor. You can find more of his writing and podcasting at Apocalypse Sports, and follow him on Twitter here.

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Is Nathan Fielder Cruel-and If He Is, Does It Matter?

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His awkwardness and inability to conform became a selling point. Publications such as GQ market their content about Fielder in an ironic manner: the article is named 'a totally normal conversation' implying that there is more than meets the eye to this guy who tries his best to be normal.

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His HBO show nearly broke our brains. So we asked Rehearsal breakout Kor Skeete to help us figure him out.

GQ Hype: It's the big story of right now.

Nathan Fielder's hallucinatory HBO series The Rehearsal begins from an ostensibly reasonable premise: wouldn't life be easier if you knew what was coming? Of course, given that Fielder is the deadpan genius last seen performing his very special consulting for small business owners on Nathan For You, things were never going to be quite that simple.

When the show debuted this summer, its opening moments revealed the extreme lengths to which Fielder was prepared to go when it came to getting things right: intercut with Fielder's attempt to convince a mild-mannered teacher named Kor Skeete to join the show and let Fielder put him through his own set of rehearsals was footage of Fielder spending weeks rehearsing that very interaction. All the preparation paid off, and Skeete quickly found himself inside a cross between Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Truman Show, and the Stanford Prison Experiment. And as the season progressed, it became increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction: what was real? What was staged? And why, exactly, was Fielder so invested in these rehearsals in the first place?

We figured the best person to ask Fielder was Skeete himself, who had answered a Craigslist ad seeking people with secrets only to find himself a star on one of the strangest, most compelling TV shows we've ever seen. It turns out that no amount of careful planning can prevent odd, unforeseen, occasionally troubling, and frequently hilarious things from happening.

But when we tried to reunite them for a conversation over Zoom, we were immediately reminded that at least some parts of life are made easier when you can rehearse them a few dozen times.

Nathan Fielder logs onto Zoom. He has Kor Skeete on the phone, and is attempting to walk him through signing into the video call.
Nathan Fielder: Kor? Are you there, Kor? Hold on a sec, I just want to... Kor? Hello?

Kor Skeete: I need to have my credit card.

NF: You shouldn't have to have your credit card, Kor, for Zoom. It should let you sign on for free if you just have a link.

KS: Well, on my end it says credit card, unless there's another way.

NF: Do you want to just try pressing the link, Kor? If you have the app, you can just press the link. Right? And then, what happens then? Hello? Kor? Kor? I'm going to try sending you a phone number. Can you hear me, Kor? Do you want to try this? Can you hear me, Kor?

KS: I'm at 20%, going up to 100.

NF: 20% what?

KS: To put it into play.

NF: 20% download, Kor? Is that what it is?

KS: Yeah. 20% download.

NF: Okay.
[Minutes pass.]
KS: I am...connecting.
[Kor joins the Zoom, blurry and silent.]
NF: Oh, there. There we go. Okay, okay. We got him? There we go. Oh, I can't hear him. Oh, audio. There we go. Connecting to audio. He did not connect to audio. You need to allow your audio. I can't hear you. Are you on wifi, Kor? Are you on wifi? Kor? I can't hear you, Kor.

KS: Can you hear me?

NF: Yeah, we can hear you.

NF: Kor, where are you right now?

KS: It's not a good visual, huh?

NF: No.

KS: You can barely make me out, right?

NF: Yeah.

KS: These lights are awful here. Yeah.

NF: Kor, where are you right now?

KS: I'm just a visual blur, but here I am.

NF: There's a lot of music where you are.

KS: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I need to move away from the music.

NF: Kor, do you want to just do a conference call? Kor, I'm just going to call you.
[Nathan leaves the Zoom and calls Kor on the phone.]
NF: Hello? Hello, can you hear me, Kor? Kor? Kor, are you there? Kor? Kor?

KS: Okay.

NF: Hey, Kor, are you there?

KS: Yeah.

NF: Hello? Your reception's kind of bad.

KS: Let's see. Okay, wait a second here. I'm moving to the area where there's less noise. All right. Noise. Oh shit. Better reception?

NF: Are you outdoors?

KS: No, no. I'm still indoors.

NF: Would it be better reception outside? Because-

KS: There's no wifi outside.

NF: You need wifi for just a normal call? We're on a normal call now.

KS: Oh, okay. All right. That's true. Okay. Can you hear the music in the background?

NF: It's really tough. Is there a place where you can sort of get good audio?

KS: I have my speaker on at this point. Let's see. This is about as high as it gets.

NF: Do you want to try not using speaker? Just using normal.
[Kor turns off speakerphone.]
NF: That's a lot better. That's a lot better.

KS: All right. Finally. Geez, this investigative journalism stuff is taxing.

Phone connection established, Kor gets down to the task at hand. His first meeting with Fielder, it turned out, was the moment seen during the first episode of The Rehearsal, when Nathan-having rehearsed the experience a number of times-makes a joke about the warren of doors at the entrance to Kor's apartment. In that first episode, Nathan helped Kor rehearse for a difficult task: explaining to his bar trivia teammates that he didn't have a master's degree, as he'd previously shared. The episode ends with "Pure Imagination," the haunting song from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, plays-a musical cue that, it turns out, Kor had a hand in.

KS: Well, I was going to start the interview by saying that this is a man that needs no introduction.

NF: Oh, thank you. Wow.

KS: But I particularly understand this because I lived this experience of not being introduced to you, literally until we opened the "house of doors," which some people likened it to a chapter in a Lewis Carroll novel.

NF: That's what I felt like you were very good at. Throughout the shoot, you would constantly be saying... Like I remember when I first showed you the bar, you gave a metaphor that it looks like an alligator and you're going to be going into the alligator. And you made other references to other movies throughout. You made a Willy Wonka reference that I think a lot of people really latched onto to explain your experience. And that was very...I'm not very articulate, I don't pull out metaphors like that. I found those moments to be actually very insightful and useful when we were putting it together.

KS: Well, I was very flabbergasted, if my witticisms and wits least inspired the Willy Wonka thing. It seemed to encapsulate a part of what you were trying to put out there, especially with the song, "Pure Imagination," at the end. I believe Anthony Newley and another gentleman wrote the song. It came out in 1971, and I was wondering-the estate of the family, I hope they were quite okay with the use of this iconic song. I assume you had to get the rights for that.

NF: Yeah, we had to get the rights. And on the song, I guess the licensing of that song in particular, Gene Wilder's estate needs to sign off on the use of the song. And we're lucky that they did. But that was something that we only had to license that song. It was very expensive actually.

KS: From all the people that answered the infamous Craigslist ad, were there any other people that mentioned that they were trivia aficionados at all?

NF: No, I think you might have been the only trivia person.

KS: Hm.

NF: I think I asked you at times, when we were filming, what was your interest in being a part of this show? What do you feel is the reason?

KS: I've been asked this question often, and I couldn't really give an answer encompassing everything because it's a combination of maybe helping myself, maybe helping others, looking at it as a psychological experiment, just put on film. I wasn't necessarily seeking fame or fortune or notoriety.

NF: I remember you did have kind of a glimmer of hope for fame in your eyes at the start of it. You asked, I believe, on our first day of shooting-if this was a successful project, you were curious about doing talk shows, like the Tonight Show and stuff.

KS: Yeah. So I still harbor those moments. Not necessarily being a superstar, but just having those small moments. People ask me the best thing about being a notable person. I would say the benefit now is I'm guaranteed a beautiful obituary. There'll be no way if something happens to me in the future, God forbid, that I won't get a writeup in the New York Times.

NF: Why do you care about the obituary when you'll already be dead when it comes out?

KS: Just the idea that someone will print one and my loved ones will be able to read and say, "Oh, he made his mark in the world. And it wasn't necessarily a bad mark." I don't have children. And I've always felt in my mind that the Skeete family has had generations of...well, we'll say questionable family ties. And I'm the last of seven generations and I don't have any brothers with the last name or anything else like that, or cousins with the last name. So it ends with me. I mean, I chose not to have children. There was always something about me that I wondered, "Well, if I left the earth, would I have left a positive legacy that people would talk about me kindly?" So I'll be dead, but at least I know that I'm not going to die anonymous.

As The Rehearsal aired last summer, discussion centered on whether or not Fielder was in on the joke-whether, as he came to play a larger and larger role in the story, say, of a woman rehearsing for motherhood, he was growing attached to the process, or was playing a character. The line, with Nathan, can often be hard to find.

NF: Do you feel like I was different during the filming as opposed to after?

KS: You're about the same except for small nuances. And I think that's why it works as well as it does. Because with Dick Clark, God rest his soul, what you saw with him is what you got.

NF: What does that have to do with me?

KS: Well, Dick Clark is one of those people that you feel you kind of know him, you knew him, no matter what venue he was in, whether it was a game show, whether it was the New Year's Eve events, he seemed so much himself. And the persona worked. You, you have a persona that works because of the mysteriousness behind it. And people are more intrigued by that than anything else.

NF: I'm kind of similar personality-wise to Dick Clark. Don't you think?

KS: There are moments of Dick Clark.

NF: You think so?

KS: Yeah, I suppose you have some elements of that.

NF: You think I could be kind of a big radio personality or TV host like that?

KS: Yes, you could. Yes, you could. Yes, you could.

NF: But do you feel like my personality appeals to a mainstream audience?

KS: I think now it does.

NF: Oh, now.

KS: Yes.

NF: Yeah, I just kind of want to follow Dick Clark's career, I guess. That's what I'm trying to do.

KS: Well, you're going to have to knock off Ryan Seacrest to get to that point.

NF: I'm similar to Ryan Seacrest a little. You think I could host a New Year's Eve event, like on CNN or something?

KS: Well, Nathan, I think if you hosted a New Year's Eve event, that would be a pay-per-view moment.

NF: Oh, thanks.

KS: People would pay-

NF: Kor, this is really sweet. Okay, I'm going to stop asking these questions.

KS: Well, here's the thing. It's been suggested-I was suggesting myself-that since the show got renewed for season two, you could actually sell tickets if you got Andy Cohen involved. Since Andy Cohen's famous for those reunion shows for the Mob Wives and Housewives of every city. You can host a reunion of the doppelgangers or the Oregon residents and me, the New Yorker resident. I mean that would also be a big sell.

NF: Thank you, Kor. This is a great idea and I will look into this at a future date and see if I can arrange this.

Eventually, talk turns to fashion. Kor's leather jacket was the subject of some Internet buzz, and while Nathan isn't much of a fashion plate, he did, during an episode of Nathan for You, launch Summit Ice: "a not-for-profit company dedicated to producing quality outdoor apparel and raising awareness of the Holocaust."

NF: Since it's GQ, I wonder, should we be talking about fashion a little bit? You're a very fashionable guy. What fashion brands do you love the most?

KS: Well, the key thing of my fashion is that I'm not a brand person whatsoever. I know how to tailor well.

NF: But how do you put together a good outfit? I struggle with that. I don't know how to put together a good outfit.

KS: Women tend to like your hoodies. That's been discussed in my face-to-face meetings with people. So I think you're doing well with what you have.

NF: In face-to-face meetings, people say, "I like Nathan's hoodies?"

KS: "I like Nathan's hoodies." Yes.

NF: I do have a clothing brand. I don't know if you know of it, Kor.

KS: Oh. Oh wow. Did not know this.

NF: It's called Summit Ice. You can look it up. We sell hoodies and stuff like that.

KS: Oh, that's great.

After nearly 90 minutes, Nathan and Kor get to the center of the Tootsie Pop: how, at the end of the day, Kor felt about The Rehearsal.

NF: Remember when we first met? You didn't know Nathan for You, and you pride yourself on being an expert in television trivia.

KS: Oh, I got a lot of stuff for that.

NF: I hope that wasn't embarrassing, but you-

KS: It was.

NF: -made such point of saying you were an expert in that.

KS: Well, I can explain it.

NF: It's okay. It's okay. I know it wasn't a super popular show. Maybe not in your circle.

KS: No, no, no. It was popular enough and everything. I hate to say it wasn't my type of show.

NF: Yeah, okay. You said you watched it since and then you hated it.

KS: I don't like shows that make people look a little foolish, so maybe I have some bias with that, I suppose. But you really worked hard with your writers to make a memorable statement, and I think that takes a great deal of talent. So you're not just your typical prankster. You kind of took it to a different level than America's Funniest Home Videos ever did, or even the late Allen Funt from Candid Camera. You took it to level 10 for your show.

NF: Wow, thank you, Kor. This is quite a compliment. For someone that didn't really like the show, it's a great compliment. Did you like The Rehearsal as a show?

KS: I'm getting used to it. I mean, hopefully you get a shot at the Emmy nomination in 2023, because it's too much of a cultural touchstone not to be nominated.

NF: You're saying it's a touchstone, but you also didn't really like it, you're saying?

KS: No, no, no, no, no. I was trying to...

NF: Like seven out of 10?

KS: Oh, I would give it eight out of 10.

NF: Eight out 10, that's not bad.

KS: It kept me riveted. As much as mine made me reasonably notable, I'm still conflicted about certain things, about the episode, the idea-

NF: Eight out of 10?

PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Photographs by Asger Carlsen
Styled by Sean Knight
Grooming by Hee Soo Kwon using Balmain Hair Couture
Tailoring by K.K. Cheng

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A Totally Normal Conversation With Nathan Fielder

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His HBO show nearly broke our brains. So we asked 'Rehearsal' breakout Kor Skeete to help us figure him out.

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If the attention to detail in Nathan For You was noteworthy, this show propels it into an obsession. Nathan, the director constructs numerous exact replicas of bars, houses and apartments in which stressful situations are going to occur. For example, one participant wants to make a confession to his friend in a pizzeria. One of the many possible scenarios includes eating a pizza. Therefore, a fake oven somehow producing real pizzas has to be operational for each rehearsal attempt.

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The simulations the director creates got increasingly more convoluted and delineated from the initial premise of the show.

The director taught acting lessons to the actors who would play minor roles in the rehearsals. He stressed the importance of trying to understand the subject an actor wishes to imitate. Therefore, instructed his students to stalk people they wanted to act like.

Preoccupied by his own idea, the director too wished to understand others better by stalking and embodying them. That is why he restarted the acting lesson with himself as one of the students and a different group of actors playing him (the teacher) and other pupils.

Not only that, but he rented an apartment identical to the one his student lives in, decorated it accordingly and cast two pretend flatmates.

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but 'pretend' did not satisfy him. At some point he began living in the actual apartment of the student he was playing without his knowledge.

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Nathan casually takes a photo of a woman screaming during an exorcism.

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In a future episode (in relation to the interview) he addresses the story told on the talk show. Apparently, he was embarrassed of being boring in his previous appearances so he analyzed the storytelling of other talk show guests and created the perfect anecdote.

Our guy is not a liar, of course, so he had to arrange for the entire story, down to the detail, to be technically true. Here we see him in fact attending someone's wedding in a comically oversized suit that he found in someone else's bag he mistook for his own.

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To avoid legal trouble involving some convoluted scheme, Nathan has to shoot a short film. He writes and directs it himself. Naturally, it involves a romantic scene.

He decides to cast himself as the male lead.

To reduce production costs, I'm sure.

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Nathan, the businessman asks an actress to repeat saying she loves him for tens of times. She stops when she notices Nathan starting to tear up.

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The show sheds light on the side of Fielder that might not look flattering. Starting from the least unpleasant quality - self-protectiveness. In this instance, Nathan, the director senses distrust from the guy he aims to help. Nathan figures he would have to reveal something sensitive himself to establish that trust so he mentions his divorce. At that very moment, an elderly swimmer interrupts their conversation. Nathan, the writer narrates that the interruption was designed to naturally stop Nathan, the director from oversharing.

This is one of numerous examples of the series' participants receiving different information from that granted to the viewer by narration. Hence the distinction between the director and the writer.

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Nathan, the director appears in The Rehearsal, a 2022 reality TV show that initially intends to help people overcome anxieties about upcoming distressing situations by rehearsing them time and again.

Unlike Nathan, the businessman, this character challenges the simplicity of the younger Fielder(s).

We'll get to that later.

Start with Nathan, the businessman.

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He appears in public, social media and promotional content like interviews.

Think of him as the creator of the other two characters. He is closest to Nathan Fielder, the actual person.

However, they are not the same.

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Nathan Fielder on Instagram: "Went back and re-did"

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51K likes, 1,124 comments - nathanfielder on September 8, 2017: "Went back and re-did" 

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View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Nathan Fielder (@nathanfielder)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_hXrc9OKyo&ab_channel=MaxHarris

A clip from the show on YouTube received numerous comments that highlights the amazement of Fielder's talent but also the inability to connect with the director.

'I became scared of this Nathan' - one viewer comments.

These characteristics, arguably absent or not as explicit in his other work, portray Fielder as truly a one-of-a-kind although not exemplary human being.

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Fielder, in whichever incarnation, is careful not to speak too much about controversial issues such as the Israel-Palestine relations or racial tensions

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Nathan, the businessman and Nathan, the writer strive for social validation. 

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Nathan, the businessman and Nathan, the writer strive for social validation. 

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The series was a smashing success, both financially and critically. Most reviewers applauded its biting social commentary and comedic originality.

By comparing him to Andy Kaufman and the absurdist humour at large, these magazines add to the brand of Fielder that can be described as the normal-looking dude with crazy ideas.

Take note of the pictures the reviewers choose. We'll compare them to the ones from The Rehearsal reviews.

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There are few working comedians out there quite like Nathan Fielder. In a world where comedy has become increasingly digitized, Fielder can always be counted on to remind us of the absurdity of real life. His humor, which often consists of cringe antics, ingenious, if morally questionable scheming, and a Canadian robot monotone, might not be for everyone. Yet Fielder's brand of comedy is unlike anything else that's been put on screen before, and it continues to offer us unique cultural commentary with every new turn it takes.

Fielder rose to fame with his 2013 Comedy Central show Nathan For You, where, as a graduate of one of Canada's "top business schools," he provides strategic advice to struggling small businesses. In the series, Fielder plays an extremely off-kilter version of himself, unsmiling, and almost unbearably socially awkward. The "advice" Fielder offers to each business is a bit unorthodox; to say the least; it is marketing at its peak outlandishness and (in)effectiveness. The show is a lot more than an uncomfortable cringe comedy - it is an incisive and self-reflexive commentary on American consumerism and post-2008 business culture. Meanwhile, Nathan For You, and the remainder of Fielder's work, is so memorable because it also manages to have such a huge heart.

Since 2017, after Nathan For You's stunning documentary-style finale, Fielder has been working on a number of side projects, including executive-producing HBO's How to With John Wilson and starring in the soon-to-be-released Showtime series The Curse with Benny Safdie. Fielder now returns to the spotlight with his brand-new HBO series The Rehearsal, which the comedian writes, directs, and stars in. Whatever Fielder does, now and moving forward, it is bound to continue to make us laugh, cry, and reflect a little - only to laugh and cry again.

Related: The Best Prank Comedy Movies, Ranked

Persona that Doesn't Become Caricature

Many great comics, whether on stage or in front of the camera, adapt specific personae that sometimes become forever bound to their act itself. Think of our favorite strange talk show hosts, Zach Galifianakis and Eric Andre - either of these anti-humor masterminds take the image of a cheap late-night host and bend it to its wildest, most audacious extremes. The result becomes a new caricature in itself, the talk show host minus the talk show host, for future generations to bend and manipulate at their will.

Fielder takes a bit of a more human approach to his on-screen persona. Although the character on Nathan For You is not the "real" Fielder himself, Fielder has repeatedly opened up about how his own social awkwardness directly inspires what he does on screen. For viewers, as well as for the subjects on the show, Fielder's awkwardness is no less than self-evident. One person, who did not seem to take much of a liking to Fielder, nicknamed him "the wizard of loneliness." Fielder makes many attempts to coordinate hangouts with his subjects, to always be shut down very quickly. In one particular episode, he makes an actress "rehearse" the line "I love you" to him an innumerable amount of times.

Obviously, Fielder's own personality is exaggerated for the screen. Indeed, he may be droll and reserved, but Fielder is very far from a real-life "wizard of loneliness." This is what makes the show so wholesomely well-rounded - it taps into something real and emotionally resonant, while being able to fashion a persona as memorable as any Andre or Kaufman.

The Spoofer Vs. The Spoofed

Whatever social anxieties abound, Fielder is not afraid to embrace the unthinkable when it comes to (fake) business marketing. What is mesmerizing about the comic is his ability to stay in character all the time, as he proposes such plans like inducting a new "poop" flavor into a frozen yogurt shop. Some of Fielder's other most memorable schemes from Nathan For You include giving out "free" one-inch pizzas; inclining people to go camping in the wilderness for a gas station rebate, and opening up a homely neighborhood café called Dumb Starbucks. Throughout the show, Fielder's unmatched business genius gets him into a fair amount of legal trouble and makes him quite a few enemies as opposed to friends.

What makes Fielder's absurd antics so worthwhile, though, is their ability to transcend the typical prank show's empty self-indulgence. Fielder's "tricks," especially considering the subjects' ignorance to the show's real nature, might appear cruel and even a bit sadistic at first. But that is not where the "spoof" element of the show ends - or even begins. More than a heartless plot to see how gullible people really are, Nathan For You is instead a spoof on the ludicrous state of business marketing today. What's so funny about the show is not that people don't see that it's fake - it's that, in today's world, it very well could be real.

Related: Top 13 Comedy Movies of 2021

Meta-humor has grown increasingly "in" over the past few years, with the strongest "jokes" now seeming to always be about jokes or "the state of comedy" (whatever that should mean). Although this sort of self-referential humor was popularized well before the internet age, through such legends as the late Norm Macdonald, the internet has made it all the more virulent and unavoidable. The isolation we've all experienced after a certain p-word occurrence certainly hasn't helped, either, as Bo Burnham's Inside reminded us last year.

While meta-humor can capture the inherent uneasiness and skepticism of our times, it can also be a catalyst to it, repeatedly asking the same questions without ever attempting any answers. Fielder's new show, The Rehearsal decides to take a fresher, more emotionally-bound approach to the meta humor of today. Although the show, which allows participants to "rehearse their own lives," has been compared to films like Charlie Kaufman's Synechdoche; New York, there is a bit more warmth this time around.

In the debut episode of the series, titled "Orange Juice, No Pulp," Fielder helps a man confess the truth to an old friend, after he had found himself caught in a lie for years. The typical Nathan For You style absurdism is still there, as we see the man practice this encounter many times in a staggeringly authentic replica of a Brooklyn pub. The show inevitably prompts us to reflect on our own lives, and the extent to which we can ever really "rehearse" for them. Yet in this case, we get to watch connections blossom and grow over time, between both Kor and his friend and Nathan and Kor. We still don't really know how much of it is real. But, this time around, we know that Fielder really wants to help.

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How Nathan Fielder Masters the Art of Absurdist Comedy

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The Canadian comedian is never afraid to make a fool of himself or the world that he lives in.

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How do I even begin to describe Nathan For You? It's one of the best shows on TV, that much is certain. But is it a prank show? An elaborate piece of performance art? A sketch show? I couldn't rightly say. But this much is clear: it's nothing like anything else on TV.

At this point, Nathan Fielder is well known enough that people in the industry are "in" on the joke. His awkward interview with the stars of The Night Before (Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Anthony Mackie) is as awkward as advertised - but it's also got a sheen of artificiality - clearly these are famous actors who wouldn't put themselves in an interview situation with Nathan Fielder if they weren't in on the joke:

However, outside the industry, Nathan Fielder is still able to get away with some pretty miraculous things. This season of Nathan For You, its third, has featured some of the most audacious stunts so far. One episode featured Nathan attempting to start a fitness craze in order to provide a moving company with free labor. Last night's episode, the most recent, entitled "Smokers Allowed", started out with a simple, but ingenious, premise: It's illegal to smoke in bars in California. But what if there were a legal loophole that would allow smokers to enjoy their drinks indoors?

What ensues is an elaborate piece of performance art culminating in Nathan Fielder directing a play to meticulously re-enact an evening at the bar. It's surreal, at times spectacular, and constantly hilarious. The details that Fielder injects into his character - at one point he is rehearsing with an actor and makes her repeat the line "I love you" to himself about ten times - are so spectacularly realized, and Fielder's deadpan ability to never break, to never admit that he's in on the joke, is unbelievable. That the play then culminates in an anti-smoking PSA? The perfect icing to an already delicious cake.

In thinking about how to categorize Nathan Fielder's performance work, I realized there's another performer who he has a lot in common with: Andy Kaufman. Just like Andy Kaufman, it's never clear where the joke ends and the real person begins. Just like Andy Kaufman, everything he does is hilarious, but borders on the brink of being serious performance art. The play that Fielder puts on in"Smokers Allowed" isn't all that different from some of the stunts that Andy Kaufman would pull - one that comes to mind is his memorable Saturday Night Live performance of Mighty Mouse:

A key part of what makes this "shtick" work is the two performers' abilities to walk the fine line between comedy and drama. Putting on the damaged personas that they do, and making themselves the butt of the joke as much as they do, puts them in a precarious situation.

In the case of Nathan For You, overdoing the "cringe" factor risks putting off audiences to the whole show, making them too uncomfortable to watch. On the other hand, without the human connection that Nathan Fielder is able to provide, it's just another prank show, a Punk'd for small businesses. Fielder is able to inject just enough personality to carry the show without ever overdoing it - it's never quite clear if you were meant to be laughing with him or at him. All said, it's not far removed from the "foreign man" character that Andy Kaufman would do, or the "Tony Clifton" character that Kaufman would put on..

Like his predecessor Andy Kaufman, Nathan Fielder blurs the lines between comedy and performance art on Nathan For You. And like Andy Kaufman, it's simply joyous to watch.

If you're interested in learning more about Andy Kaufman, I highly recommend the biopic Man on the Moon, by the indelible Miloš Forman, and starring Jim Carrey. It's a great entry point into the life of one of the strangest people in recent history.

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Nathan For You: The Modern-Day Andy Kaufman

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How do I even begin to describe Nathan For You? It's one of the best shows on TV, that much is certain. But is it a prank show? An elaborate piece of performance art? A sketch show? I couldn't rightly say. But this much is clear: it's nothing like anything else on TV.

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A recurring motif in Nathan For You is taking an already whacky idea to extreme lengths while making unnecessary side quests. To illustrate one instance I recommend the Antique Shop episode.

It starts off pretty simple: the businessman convinces the shop owner to extend the shop's working hours to increase the probability of a late-night bar frequenting drinkers accidentally smashing antiques and paying for them.

What comes next is not hard to explain but I wish not to derive the reader of the surprises that follow.

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No matter how hard he tries, Fielder cannot hide his true individuality under the guise of normality.

The traits that make him unique once in a while appear on Nathan For You or in his public appearances (see example below) but they truly blossom in his second major project - The Rehearsal.

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Labeled 'the spiritual successor to Nathan For You', this show (at least initially) engages in the core qualities of the other two Nathans, as illustrated by the promotional picture and voiced by Nathan, the director in the series' trailer (to the right):

1) weirdness in normality.

2) awkwardness

3) unwavering commitment

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A man named Kor, Nathan's swimming companion, gets tricked or manipulated by him multiple times in increasingly elaborate ways.

He wants to have the pizzeria meeting during a trivia night and implies to Nathan that his performance in the game might affect his willingness to go through with the confession. He does never cheat.

But the director does.

He designed their casual strolls to include apparently random encounters with people who accidentally tell Kor the answers to the trivia questions that the director got to know by implementing another ruse.

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It quickly becomes clear to the viewer that the person the director wishes to help the most in not any of the participants but himself. As the show progresses, he finds ways to find active roles for himself in others' rehearsals. One of them includes a woman trying to prepare for motherhood.

The director builds a house, hires a bunch of child actors of various ages and lets aspiring mother raise them. At some point he proposes the introduction of a father figure that he himself assumes. After a while the participant chooses to leave but the director continues the rehearsals for his own reasons.

Has he ever intended to help anyone? Or just himself?

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Rehearsed Manipulation: The World of Nathan Fielder

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Warning: This article contains major spoilers for the first four episodes of "The Rehearsal."
If you've been following "The Rehearsal" for the past few weeks now, you're probably aware that Nathan Fielder's pseudo-reality puzzle has been the subject of contention for some. The premise of the HBO series initially revolved around the awkward comedian taking people under his wing to meticulously rehearse a scenario until it manifests into the desired outcome in reality, but the way in which Fielder has involved himself in his participants' lives has made this feel much more personal.

It's a mesmerizing, touching and shocking insight into the trials of trying to perceive the predictability of human nature. In the series premiere, Fielder attempts to help Kor Skeete, a Brooklyn teacher with a penchant for trivia, formulate the timeline of events so he can feel comfortable telling his long-time trivia partner that his master's degree has been a facade. But long before Fielder reveals the insane full-scale replica of the bar they'll be rehearsing in, Fielder confesses that their first meeting, and the conversation herein, was, in and of itself, a part of his own rehearsal.

Fielder had sent in his crew, posing as gas workers, to take pictures of Skeete's apartment, which in turn would be used to construct a heavily detailed full-scale replica of his apartment. Using Skeete's faux apartment, Fielder practices their first interaction, including the revelation that this seemingly organic interaction is not as spontaneous as Skeete was led to believe.

Within the first rug pull, it becomes clear that "The Rehearsal" is way more than a "Nathan For You" redux. It's the evolution of Fielder's method, and with that came a flurry of reactions from all corners of the internet on whether his actions are manipulative or not.

Fielder's experiment has garnered divisive reactions

Twitter has been embroiled in controversy (because water is wet) on whether "The Rehearsal" is taking advantage of its subjects. People had been talking about the show prior, but it was around the time that Richard Brody's piece from The New Yorker about Fielder's "cruel and arrogant gaze" came out that discussions thrust it onto the discourse train. Brody believes that Fielder's reigning authority ultimately dismisses the people at the center of his experiment:

"If the series is meant to be comedy, so much the worse, for making light of problems that matter to the participants - and for making even lighter of the deceptions to which he subjects them."

On the other side, you have Adrian Horton from The Guardian who believes that labeling the show as purely callous manipulation are missing the point:

"Of course it's manipulation - the discomfort with a person's portrayal, its perceived fairness or unfairness, is a core tenet and landmine of making television about real people appearing more or less as themselves."

Most people, myself included, appear to align with Horton's way of viewing Fielder as the ringleader of this wild circus ride. I think it's wise to keep in mind that no one is exempt from criticism, especially reality television, but it's difficult to use manipulation as a "gotcha" when Fielder doesn't hide any of his outlandish tactics to the viewing audience. There's a difference between manipulation and exploitation, and it's clear which one Fielder lands on.

Reality television is inherently manipulative

Reality television often asks us to take what we're seeing at face value. But if you've ever seen a reality show before, you know this isn't the case. If you took out all of the dramatic music stingers behind Gordon Ramsay's kitchen outbursts, you'd just be left with the awkward silence behind it.

You don't hear that because it wouldn't make good television. The camera sees a portion of the big picture, and the editor sees what the creative team wants us to see. It's less an issue that lies with Nathan Fielder, and more with reality television in general.

To answer the question, yes, "The Rehearsal" is manipulative, but if you're even vaguely aware of Fielder's line of work, he's not exactly trying to hide that. "Nathan For You" would test its subjects to see how far they would be willing to go if someone like Fielder suggested something wildly outrageous, such as setting up a legal smoking precedent in a dive bar under the guise of performance art.

Fielder always finds himself in the company of fascinating people, and often uses his process to undress their nature for the camera. Case in point: After the devout Robbin decides he's going to stay the night at Angela's to help raise the fake baby, Fielder accompanies him to his apartment to pack some things. That one trip gives Fielder the opportunity to show some insight into the chaos of Robbin's life, and his lack of mayonnaise ownership.

Throughout "The Rehearsal," Fielder has been more upfront about things like child labor laws, emotional honesty, and the ethical nature of his own show. It's in the series' fourth episode, however, that undresses Nathan's television maneuvers for what they really are.

Episode 4 puts things into perspective

In episode 4, Fielder recognizes that his entire process is in some way designed to manipulate the performance. This is where the show goes full "Inception." To recruit background actors for his rehearsals, he sets up an acting school in LA called "The Fielder Method." Throughout the classes, Fielder starts to notice that one student named Thomas is having a hard time getting into the unconventional groove of Fielder's approach.

In order to see things from his perspective, Fielder hires more actors to play the actors in his class, while he embodies Thomas. He then proceeds to experience said class from Thomas' perspective. The more times Fielder experiences his own method, the more he understands the lengths of which his entire operation is sculpted to manipulate the performance. Lila Shapiro from Vulture understands as much:

"Fielder understands that when people go on reality TV, they have certain expectations for how they're supposed to act. In his own shows, he uses a variety of tactics to throw his subjects off-balance - needling or misdirecting them, sitting in excruciating silence until they crack."

The most important revelation happens when Fielder recognizes how deeply authenticity can be skewed by the knowledge of simply being on camera.

At its base, "The Rehearsal" is a consistently hilarious pseudo-reality bit with a surrealist bent, and at its most reflective is Fielder at his most introspective, questioning the legitimacy and emotional resonance of his entire operation. The show has always been about Fielder more than anything else. "The Rehearsal" thrives on manipulation and that's what makes it so great. With only two episodes left to go, who knows what other kind of mind-bending rug pulls Fielder has in store for us?

"The Rehearsal" airs every Friday and is currently streaming on HBO Max.

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Is The Rehearsal Manipulative? Let's Reenact This Scenario And Find Out - /Film

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The plan: Get people riled up over the manipulative nature of reality TV before making them realize they're part of the problem.

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Although audiences became distant from the Fielder persona, interest in his work among viewers in higher than ever.

The Rehearsal was particularly popular among YouTube video essayists that focused mainly of the meta-narratives of the show and its dubious morals. That stands in opposition to the Nathan For You discourse that mainly consisted of discussion about Fielder's humour and social commentary.

Ten years ago the audiences were entertained by a funny relatable guy. Today they are astonished and inspired to question their world because of a singular exceptional person.

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Critics almost universally gave the show rave reviews and applauded the complexity and innovativeness of the show.

In the director's character psychologist academics found substantial material for a manipulation case study.

In the exploration of (un)reality reviewers found philosophical merit.

What changed from critics' articles about Nathan For You is the tone. Earlier the tone used to be lighter and readers would see Fielder smiling in a silly pose, whereas the pictures they used this time capture Fielder in his most contemplative or even sinister.

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Fielder's persona evolved throughout the years.

In brief, it went from the funny relatable misfit to the exceptional yet sinister talent.

Has the writer changed his demeanor as well?

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The Rehearsal: Art in the Age of Disintegration