Latest news with #CanadianIdol
CTV News
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Actor Melissa O'Neil talks 'The Rookie' season eight and reflects on her 'Canadian Idol' win
Video At the Bell Media upfronts, actor Melissa O'Neil chats with CTV's Jee-Yun Lee about The Rookie's eighth season, and her 2005 Canadian Idol win.
USA Today
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Explaining The Rehearsal's season 2, a show that defies explanation
Explaining The Rehearsal's season 2, a show that defies explanation Nathan Fielder opened season two of The Rehearsal with a premise. After studying aviation accidents (relatable to anyone who Wikipedia wormholes their way through a bunch of crashes a few times per year because my brain is broken in that one specific way), he came to the conclusion several are the result of ineffective cockpit communication. The pilot makes an error. The co-pilot doesn't correct. Disaster ensues. While this is a minor slice of plane crashes, which are a truly minor slice of air travel, Fielder made this the sticking point of the latest season of his HBO docu-comedy. After spending season one documenting social situations and, ultimately, the connections and communication of parenting, season two appeared to take a more serious bent. Except, well, it's Nathan Fielder -- a comedian whose portfolio is rooted in escalating ridiculous situations in search of answers instead of quiet reflection. And, yep, that's what we get. Fielder's first step was to observe pilots from a wide range of employers (though all with the common denominator of signing up for an HBO show). He determined they don't make personal connections, leaving barriers between them fueled by the uneven status of a co-pilot and pilot. He does this with the aid of a full-size replica of roughly four gates worth of Houston's Bush International Airport. Is this vital? Nope! Is it a great visual? Absolutely. Fielder's plan to get these pilots better attuned to delivering harsh news in tough situations dialed in to his former experience working behind the scenes at Canadian Idol, a show that's exactly what you're picturing. He devised Wings of Voice, a pilot-judged (and fake) singing competition to sharpen his pilots' ability to deliver bad news. He interjected in one devastatingly shy pilot's personal life to help him pick up on cues that a potential love interest is giving him the green light. He worked on ways to role play scenarios to make cockpit communication better and examined his own inability to connect sympathetically with contestants to whom he delivered bad news (this does not include the one disgruntled contestant who'd later complain about the farce, allegedly because HBO declined to promote their album). Despite that, he found himself unable to bring his developments in front of Congress, even with the backing of former National Transportation Safety Board executive John Goglia. This led to a (neuro)divergent path. Sometime after Season 1, online communities of autistic people began praising season one of The Rehearsal for accurately depicting masking -- running through and going along with social situations even when they aren't fully understood in an effort to suppress autistic traits. Fielder used this connection to meet with Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD) founder Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh, eventually joining the Center's board and opening up the use of his airport set for practice purposes for autistic people. It also shed light on Fielder's potential autism diagnosis -- though whether that's legitimate or merely something ginned up to make compelling television is one of Fielder's mysteries. Fielder's work with CARD opened the door for a meeting with U.S. Representative Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee) -- senior member of the Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure to discuss his research into cockpit communication. But whether by accident or design, Fielder stumbled through the meeting with little success. It was time for Plan B, which may have been Plan A all along. The final episode of the season revealed Fielder had spent two arduous years training for and receiving his pilot's license. He was certified to fly 737s -- though not commercially with paying passengers. The actors who've been studying his method since the first season and throughout the second instead played the role of travelers for a two-plus hour flight from California, into Nevada, and then back to the West Coast. One of the pilots who'd expressed an interest in producing television served as his co-pilot, leaving him with a barrier for criticism -- Fielder could squash his hopes of moving his content to a more visible medium. Ultimately, the two shared a stilted conversation in the cockpit that eventually allowed the co-pilot to raise some minor concerns. And, because we didn't hear about a disaster on a private airstrip where hundreds perished as a gag, Fielder landed the plane without issue. (Oh, and at one point Fielder tried to replicate the lives of three cloned dogs in order to see if he could systematically instill the traits of a good pilot into a new generation of fliers. Scant evidence of that led him to speedrun through Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger's life. He shaved his entire body and breastfed from an enormous puppet of the heroic pilot's mom, simulated a midwestern upbringing and got aroused in the cockpit of a (simulated) flight. Ultimately, Fielder (cribbing from Sullenberger's autobiography) came to the conclusion an iPod and an Evanescence song -- whose chorus is coincidentally the exact length of radio silence following the bird strike that preceded his miracle landing on New York City's Hudson River -- awakened Sully's ability to communicate and served as his therapy, allowing him to save the lives of his passengers that fateful chilly day. It's a lovely, weird sentiment, albeit one almost certainly unmoored from reality.) Ultimately, that tenuous connection to the world itself can apply to most things from season two. What is not fake is Fielder's flying credentials; some of the last moments of the season show him working for a company that relocates 737s to new homes, shedding light on why more than 100 actors would put their lives in the hands of a man who, before 2024, was perhaps best known for creating Dumb Starbucks and creating a line of outdoorswear that doubled as Holocaust education efforts (another sore point in season two, as Fielder rehearses a meeting with Paramount Plus executives, who have scrubbed that episode from their streaming service). Fielder wrapped the season staring down a voicemail from a doctor who wanted to discuss the results of an fMRI test that could shed light on a potential autism diagnosis. He deletes it while watching the winner of his fake singing competition belt out Evanescence's Bring Me to Life. He concludes 'only the smartest and best people are allowed to fly planes of this size. It feels good to know that if you're here, you must be fine.'
CBC
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
How Nathan Fielder briefly revived Canadian Idol in the name of flight safety
Vancouver's own Nathan Fielder is making some of the most original, tender and absurd comedy on TV. In the second season of The Rehearsal, Fielder's critically acclaimed HBO comedy series, he uses "a construction crew, a legion of actors, and seemingly unlimited resources" in an effort to improve flight safety, of all things. But his approach is anything but straightforward. For instance, in one particularly memorable episode from Season 2, Fielder brings back the reality singing competition Canadian Idol in order to help co-pilots improve their communication skills. As awkward and mind-boggling as it sounds, the episode — and the series on the whole — prove to be both hilarious and extremely watchable. Today on Commotion, culture critics Amil Niazi, Angelo Muredda and Adam Nayman join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about the bizarre yet addictive second season of The Rehearsal. We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube: Elamin: Amil, the second episode of this season does something quite extraordinary, which is that Nathan Fielder goes back and mines his past work as a Canadian Idol junior producer. And he does this in the context of getting a whole bunch of co-pilots, and realizing they have a hard time making somebody else uncomfortable. And so, they're gonna have to let down a whole bunch of people by creating this fictitious singing competition, and have these co-pilots turn down as many people as possible. How did it feel to see a resurrection of Canadian Idol, out of all things, in the context of flight safety? Amil: I thought it was amazing. First of all, I didn't know that about him, but it makes so much sense. He is a master of this genre. He has such a — now we know — insider's knowledge of how best to make people reveal who they are in a very short amount of time. And certainly that is what these reality singing shows do remarkably well: people come, and you think they're just going to sing a little song, and then they ultimately bear their soul. And then we judge them for the rest of time. To see him talk about what he learned, or what he didn't learn, and how he was gonna mine that with the pilots, I thought, was such a great device. And then to see that ultimately it really was about him and his own discomfort with the way people perceive him, and his inability to still come across likable and sincere when he's trying to deliver good or bad news, was just so, so funny to me. And so he is having these people come in and sing their songs. The co-pilots are supposed to deliver bad news, but still maintain an air of likeability and collegiality, because they're gonna recreate this in the cockpit. But then … the singers are rating the judges on how they perceive them. One woman gets incredible ratings, and they just love her. Elamin: Mara'D! Yes. Amil: Mara'D, and she was great! Fantastic, I should say. Nathan is so impressed with her ratings that he tries it for himself. Because of course, he was in that chair, and could he improve upon how he was perceived back then? And of course, it's Nathan, so he gets, like, two's and four's. And you get this great moment where he disagrees with one of the people's judgements on how you can't really change your aura. And therefore, Nathan can't really change whether he's likable or not. And to tie it all to Canadian Idol is just, like, chef's kiss. Elamin: There is something at the core of this, Adam, about the idea that if you are feeling disconnected from people around you, and if all you're seeking is connection with other people, and you're having a hard time saying, "Hey, there's a thing I need to say to you. And I don't know how to say it to you, and still get you to like me" — this is the stuff that Nathan is trying to play with. It's the undercurrent of the entire season. Yes, the aviation safety is a real issue that arises from this. But also, it could just damage a lot of relationships, including business relationships. One of the throughlines of this season is Nathan has a bit of a hard time saying to his bosses at Paramount, "Hey, I really disagree with the decision that you're making." Do you want to explain that? Because that is also one of the genius, I think, turns of this season. Adam: Yeah. Paramount+ had a bad morning last week, where they were under fire on the one hand from 60 Minutes, and on the other from Nathan Fielder. He talks about how an episode of Nathan for You where he found out— it takes so long to explain. The short version: he found that a clothing manufacturer was actually including Holocaust denial in their publicity materials — not fabricated as a comedy stunt. It was a real thing. So he responded to it with an equally real thing, which was he decided to donate the proceeds from his own line of bespoke winter wear, Summit Ice, to a Vancouver Holocaust museum … which he actually launched, and was taken up by a lot of prominent Hollywood celebrities, especially a lot of Hollywood Jewish entertainers. WATCH | Official trailer for The Rehearsal Season 2: And then he found the episode had been removed from Paramount+ because of "sensitivities around Jewish content," which is something that he leaves as a euphemism on the show. Because what it's euphemizing is something most comedians won't touch, even very left-leaning comedians now, pertaining to the larger global political situation. So he decides to burrow in, in his typical kind of solipsistic way. But not flippantly solipsistic. I think sincerely, like, how do you get mad at them for pulling this? And the pettiness that comes out is basically comparing Paramount+ not allegorically or metaphorically, but directly to Nazi Germany, creating their headquarters in a parody of the sort of scene you'd see in Raiders of the Lost Ark or Inglorious Basterds …. Narcissism expands into a real question about censorship, and expression, and if we try and express ourselves about an issue sincerely, and then that episode gets taken away, who's that on? And can he be more confrontational about it, or less confrontational? And of course, the actor enlisted to play the Paramount head, who has this German accent, stops halfway and starts saying, "What you're doing is ridiculous. Actually, what you are doing is flippant and somewhat inappropriate." Elamin: Because it's a TV show. Adam: Because it's a TV show. So he keeps all those things kind of in play. So there is media critique. And I think that it's as a media critic — both of the way that corporations function but also the way his own medium functions — that's the throughline in his work that I think matters the most. He is ambivalent about his own medium…. That's why the Canadian Idol as the primal scene of what he does is so interesting: because it is very self-critical. It's like Canadian Idol made him this way, and that's why he's dealing with it this way.
Globe and Mail
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Globe and Mail
HYPROV Sells Out Canada's National Arts Centre And Has Been Filmed for Television Special
New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - February 26, 2025) - The groundbreaking show that combines improv and hypnosis, HYPROV, continues its string of standing-room-only performances, announcing a sell-out at Ottawa's National Arts Centre's Southam Hall. Following successful residencies in New York and Las Vegas, and consistent sell-outs during its two-year North American tour, HYPROV has now captured its unique theatrical experience in a television special, which was filmed on February 2nd and will soon be available for distribution. Asad Mecci (left) and Colin Mochrie (right) "HYPROV has proven itself as a must-see theatrical phenomenon," says Colin Mochrie, the Emmy-nominated comedian who co-created the show alongside world-renowned hypnotist Asad Mecci. The show has garnered extraordinary acclaim, with The New York Times declaring "it killed," Forbes hailing it as "crazy comedy," and The Wall Street Journal praising it as "catnip for those who relish spontaneity." Time Out New York awarded it four stars, calling it "hilarious and fascinating," while The New Yorker said, "Say yes to HYPROV." The newly recorded special, directed by Joan Tosani, who has directed live television events such as Canadian Idol, Big Brother Canada, Canada's Got Talent, and the Juno Awards, captures the show's signature blend of hypnosis and improvisation, offering an innovative, proven comedy format with multiple possibilities. The filmed content is flexible and will serve as a standalone special or the foundation for a potential episodic series, allowing a wide range of programming options. "It's like giving someone a superpower - the ability to be completely fearless on stage" adds Mochrie. "When you remove self-doubt, what remains is pure creativity" says Mecci. The television special promises to capture the essence of the live show, where each performance is wholly unique. HYPROV invites twenty participants from the audience to be hypnotized live on stage and then perform improvised scenes, referred to as "experiments," with Mochrie and other top-tier improv comedians. This high-risk, high-reward premise results in unscripted, one-of-a-kind comedic moments that keep audiences coming back time and again. The show also features live music, adding an additional layer of spontaneity and excitement to the performance. Theatre and comedy lovers can still enjoy the live show at upcoming tour dates that include Montreal (MTelus) and Boston (The Wilbur). Tickets available at HYPROV audience volunteers being put under hypnosis About HYPROV HYPROV is a live entertainment company founded by Colin Mochrie and Asad Mecci, combining hypnosis and improvisation in a stage performance. Established in 2015, the company has presented its format in theaters and festivals across various regions. HYPROV continues to tour, offering performances that incorporate audience participation and improvisational elements. Press Inquiries HYPROV Matthew D'Arrigo press@ 646-598-9560 420 W. 45th Street, 2nd FL New York, NY 10036 To view the source version of this press release, please visit
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
HYPROV Sells Out Canada's National Arts Centre And Has Been Filmed for Television Special
New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - February 26, 2025) - The groundbreaking show that combines improv and hypnosis, HYPROV, continues its string of standing-room-only performances, announcing a sell-out at Ottawa's National Arts Centre's Southam Hall. Following successful residencies in New York and Las Vegas, and consistent sell-outs during its two-year North American tour, HYPROV has now captured its unique theatrical experience in a television special, which was filmed on February 2nd and will soon be available for distribution. Asad Mecci (left) and Colin Mochrie (right) "HYPROV has proven itself as a must-see theatrical phenomenon," says Colin Mochrie, the Emmy-nominated comedian who co-created the show alongside world-renowned hypnotist Asad Mecci. The show has garnered extraordinary acclaim, with The New York Times declaring "it killed," Forbes hailing it as "crazy comedy," and The Wall Street Journal praising it as "catnip for those who relish spontaneity." Time Out New York awarded it four stars, calling it "hilarious and fascinating," while The New Yorker said, "Say yes to HYPROV." The newly recorded special, directed by Joan Tosani, who has directed live television events such as Canadian Idol, Big Brother Canada, Canada's Got Talent, and the Juno Awards, captures the show's signature blend of hypnosis and improvisation, offering an innovative, proven comedy format with multiple possibilities. The filmed content is flexible and will serve as a standalone special or the foundation for a potential episodic series, allowing a wide range of programming options. "It's like giving someone a superpower - the ability to be completely fearless on stage" adds Mochrie. "When you remove self-doubt, what remains is pure creativity" says Mecci. The television special promises to capture the essence of the live show, where each performance is wholly unique. HYPROV invites twenty participants from the audience to be hypnotized live on stage and then perform improvised scenes, referred to as "experiments," with Mochrie and other top-tier improv comedians. This high-risk, high-reward premise results in unscripted, one-of-a-kind comedic moments that keep audiences coming back time and again. The show also features live music, adding an additional layer of spontaneity and excitement to the performance. Theatre and comedy lovers can still enjoy the live show at upcoming tour dates that include Montreal (MTelus) and Boston (The Wilbur). Tickets available at HYPROV audience volunteers being put under hypnosis About HYPROV HYPROV is a live entertainment company founded by Colin Mochrie and Asad Mecci, combining hypnosis and improvisation in a stage performance. Established in 2015, the company has presented its format in theaters and festivals across various regions. HYPROV continues to tour, offering performances that incorporate audience participation and improvisational elements. Press Inquiries HYPROVhttps:// D'Arrigo press@ W. 45th Street, 2nd FL New York, NY 10036 To view the source version of this press release, please visit Sign in to access your portfolio
