[COLUMN] The Rehearsal Makes Nathan Fielder Reality Television's First True Anti-Hero | by Darren Mooney

Note: This piece contains a full discussion of the first two seasons of The Rehearsal, which is streaming now on HBO Max. If you haven’t seen it, it is some of the most impressive and unsettling television I have seen. I’d cautiously recommend it. It’s incredibly thorny, but deliberately so. As a work of art, it is incredible.

The television antihero is a well-worn archetype: Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), Walter White (Bryan Cranston), Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), Don Draper (Jon Hamm). And now, Nathan Fielder (Nathan Fielder).

Developed by comedian Nathan Fielder, The Rehearsal is built around a fairly simple concept: it is possible to prepare for any major life event through practice. However, the show’s beauty lies in its embrace of the absurd, as the concept becomes a set of funhouse mirrors in which the cast and the audience become lost. A seemingly straightforward comedic premise inevitably escalates, bending backwards and inwards, contorting in ridiculous, unpredictable and often uncomfortable ways.

The Rehearsal is often framed in the context of reality television. This makes sense. As Fielder acknowledges within the show, one of his early jobs was working as a junior producer on Canadian Idol. A lot of the debate around the show, even after it aired, is the extent to which it is “real” or “staged”, and the ethics of involving real people in its elaborate set-ups. This is certainly a valid way of interrogating the series. It is self-evidently a piece of reality television.

The show is deliberately structured to make the viewer question how much of what they are seeing is either scripted or deceptively edited. In the second season finale, right before embarking on the show’s most ethically dubious stunt, the series pauses to remind the audience that Fielder was an amateur magician, obsessed with improving his technique and making it more believable. Misdirection and stagecraft are part of the trade.

Still, large parts of The Rehearsal appear to be real. Angela, the primary subject of the first season, appears to be a real person. Reportedly, the airline pilots featured in the second season are actual airline pilots. In that second season, the show recruits aviation expert John Goglia to lend its arguments in favor of airline safety some bona fides. At the same time, the show is packed with simulacra: copies, replicas, imitations, performances. Reality and fiction blur.

Indeed, part of the magic trick of The Rehearsal is the extent to which the show confronts the audience with how the sausage is made. The Rehearsal is not necessarily any more exploitative or cynical than American Idol or Survivor, shows that sculpt their narrative in the edit by creating caricatures of their subjects. The difference is that The Rehearsal doesn’t conceal these manipulations, instead asks its audience to sit with them.

This is part of a larger conversation about reality television, taking place in the shadow of the first Reality Television President. The Rehearsal emerges as part of a wave of reality television that seems designed to challenge audiences’ relationship to the form. Jury Duty scripted a heartwarming reality show. The Golden Bachelor tried to make reality television “unexpectedly heartfelt.” At the other extreme, Squid Game: The Challenge defictionalized a dystopian murder fantasy.

This is clearly something that interests Fielder as a comedian and as an artist. Between the two seasons of The Rehearsal, Fielder worked on the scripted series The Curse. That show stars Fielder and Emma Stone as a married couple who produce and host a reality television show called Fliplanthropy, which effectively gentrifies a community in Española, New Mexico. In different ways, The Curse and The Rehearsal are about the ethics of reality television.

However, while The Rehearsal can be understood as reality television, it is something more complex. The series exists at a weird junction between reality and prestige television. After all, The Rehearsal is produced by and airs on HBO, the cable channel renowned for producing shows like The Sopranos, The Wire and Deadwood. In its second season, The Rehearsal aired after The Last of Us. Its production and ambitions are greater than most reality television.

Part of this blurring of fiction and reality concerns Fielder himself. Fielder hosts the show and provides voiceover narration. However, the “Nathan” that appears on screen is largely constructed. Interviewers like Jeff Wise stress the real Fielder is fundamentally different from his onscreen counterpart, assuring readers that “[o]ffscreen, Fielder is personable, low-key, vulnerable, and generous.” Seth Rogen, who went to school with him, describes Fielder’s awkwardness as “a schtick.”

Fielder acknowledges as much. Discussing his previous show, Nathan for You, Fielder explained,  “What you see of me in the show is kind of—there’s some of me in there, but I’m also exaggerating parts of myself that I think would—I think I’m taking a lot of vulnerabilities and insecurities that I had when I was younger, and I’m exaggerating them for the sake of comedy.” As such, the “Nathan” who appears in The Rehearsal is best understood as a character rather than as a real person.

To distinguish between that character and his creator, this article will refer to the character in inverted commas, but the line between the two is intentionally blurred. This is the frisson and the tension of the show. How much of “Nathan” is actually Fielder? How much of Fielder is actually “Nathan?” More to the point, given that “Nathan” is seemingly working with real people with real lives, does that make any difference whatsoever?

It quickly becomes clear that The Rehearsal is not really about any of its ostensible subjects, but about “Nathan” himself. In the premiere, “Nathan” works with Kor Skeete, a man who lied to his trivia teammates about his education years ago and is trying to figure out how to finally come clean. “Nathan” promises that his “rehearsal” method will help Kor. He then reveals that he has actually spent days rehearsing this pitch himself, in a copy of Kor’s apartment with an actor playing Kor.

“Nathan” tends to hijack his subjects’ narratives and center himself. He constructs a replica of the bar at which Kor plays trivia, but “Nathan” ends up transporting it around the country with him so he has a place to hang out. He volunteers to help Angela rehearse to prepare for motherhood, but quickly inserts himself into the scenario as a father, fixating on his own relationship to the child. When Angela leaves, “Nathan” proceeds to continue the rehearsal for his own edification.

The none-too-subtle subtext of all this is that “Nathan” is recovering from his divorce. When Lila Shapiro asked what the show is about, Fielder refused to provide “any extra context”, although he conceded, “I did go through a divorce.” He admitted, “Even though it was very amicable, it was one of the heaviest things. I didn’t know how to talk about it.” He has talked about how it made him feel “so bad at life”, wondering if he could have done anything differently. If only he had rehearsed.

This carries into the show. When Kor asks about “Nathan’s” personal life, “Nathan” arranges for an interruption to avoid talking about it. When Angela leaves, “Nathan” replays a variety of scenarios to figure out how he might have convinced her to stay. In the first season finale, “Nathan” struggles with whether his show has emotionally damaged the children involved. Even in the second season, “Nathan” tries to stop airline crashes by getting pilots to talk to each other about their feelings.

Critic Richard Brody criticized The Rehearsal for being “arrogant, cruel, and, above all, indifferent.” This is certainly true, but it is also the point. Throughout the series, “Nathan” is confronted with the self-imposed limits of his empathy. The show suggests that a man obsessed with constructed elaborate dioramas of real-life must also become trapped within them. At various points, “Nathan” is less interested in rehearsing potential future scenarios than recreating his own past memories.

At times, The Rehearsal frames “Nathan” as manipulative and narcissistic. He sets up an acting school to teach “the Fielder Method”, where students are encouraged to stalk and study their subjects to more holistically embody them, often using false pretenses to get close to them. An actor named Thomas balks at this, “I don’t like lying to people.” “Nathan” deadpans, “No, neither do I.” Throughout the show, characters repeatedly – and justifiably – call “Nathan” a “liar.”

When he sets up a rehearsal of a meeting with Paramount Germany to discuss the removal of an episode of Nathan From You from their streaming service, he frames the company as literal Nazis. The actor involved in this rehearsal points out that the meeting isn’t actually useful. It does not serve the purpose that “Nathan” claims it does. “This is not sincere,” he protests. “Just a man with a grudge using his television show to smear us instead of trying to understand us.”

Naomi Fry described the show as “a self-portrait of a man trying to reach past his relentless solipsism.” In a surprisingly tender moment, “Nathan” tells a failed talent show contestant that she will succeed because she has the ability that truly exceptional people have “to take that risk, to put themselves out there and to give it a shot, even though it might not go their way.” The entire show is about “Nathan’s” inability to do that without the framework of a perfectly controlled environment.

In some ways, The Rehearsal feels like a timely series. It is a story about a man who has built his own version of Plato’s Cave, a constructed world in which other human beings are just props to satisfy his curiosity. “Nathan” is, in the parlance of the times, “the main character.” The Rehearsal resonates in the modern era, where people spend so much time in the virtual realities of social networks or engaging with generative artificial intelligence that serves as a flattering mirror. In the show’s first episode, Kor likens “Nathan” to Willy Wonka, and it is an astute observation. The Rehearsal is a profoundly lonely show, a story of a man retreating ever-deeper into himself.

In the world of The Rehearsal, “Nathan” is clearly the butt of the joke. He is also a figure of ambiguity. At times, it seems like even “Nathan” does not understand himself. He recreates email correspondence with Paramount using an actor. He has the actor read Paramount’s reply, asking, “How does that response make you feel?” as if parsing his own feelings. “What was I so worried about?” “Nathan” asks the actor. The actor replies, “I think you didn’t want to be too pushy.” “Nathan” seems to accept the answer about his own mental state.

In the season’s penultimate episode, “Nathan” uses an autism charity to grant himself legitimacy, to get policymakers to take him seriously. This broaches the topic of The Rehearsal as a show that can be understood through the lens of autism. “Nathan” takes a test to screen for autism, which involves looking at a shot of a person's eyes and trying to read their emotions. It is in some ways, a Rorschach test. It requires “Nathan” to be able to step outside his own head and engage with others.

This comes back around in the finale, in which “Nathan” arranges to fly a large commercial jet. Throughout the season, “Nathan” claims that he is motivated by a desire to save lives and to make air travel safer. However, there is a palpable tension within the show, an indication that this is another expression of “Nathan’s” narcissism and solipsism, the steadfast belief that he is the only person who can accomplish this task and save thousands of lives.

Naturally, any neurological condition would disqualify “Nathan” as a pilot. He arranges for a brain scan to determine whether he might have autism or suffer with anxiety. However, fearing the flight might be cancelled if the diagnosis comes back positive, he declines to acknowledge the results, deleting the message from his doctor inviting him to come in and discuss them. The camera pointedly zooms in on “Nathan’s” eyes, asking the audience to try to read his emotions.

There is a palpable uncertainty around “Nathan” as a character. For all his talk about the need to make flights safer, the final stunt in which he flies a jet full of actors posing as passengers is framed as incredibly reckless. In his closing monologue, “Nathan” tells the viewer, “They only let the smartest and best people fly a plane of this size, and it feels good to know that. No one is allowed in the cockpit if there’s something wrong with them. So, if you’re here, you must be fine.”

It is a moment that invites the audience to contemplate “Nathan” as a character, what he wants and why he does what he does. It’s a moment that solidifies “Nathan” as part of the lineage of “difficult men” that populate the annals of prestige television history. It’s an ending that solidifies The Rehearsal as a unique piece of art. It is reality television and it is comedy, but it is also a character study of an ambiguous and likely dangerous central figure. It’s a dazzling formal hybrid.

It asks: who is “Nathan”, whether for you or for himself? And it leaves the viewer sitting with that.