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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.'
Time Magazine
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
How Nathan Fielder Pulled Off His Best Stunt Yet in
W arning: This post contains spoilers for The Rehearsal Season 2 finale. Throughout The Rehearsal Season 2—and really, throughout the entirety of his career— Nathan Fielder has proven time and again that he always has another trick up his sleeve. So it really shouldn't come as a surprise that Sunday night's finale of his hit HBO series features what is perhaps his longest and most involved comedy con to date. And yet, it's still pretty difficult to believe he managed to pull this one off. After spending the first five episodes of Season 2 building an argument in support of his thesis that many plane crashes are caused by co-pilots facing difficulty speaking up to their captains when they think something is amiss, the finale flashed back two years earlier to show how Fielder spent months obtaining his commercial pilot license in order to be able to captain a real Boeing 737 plane with real passengers onboard at risk of all the real dangers of flying. However, he first had to learn how to do said flying, which he soon discovered required a skillset that didn't come easily to him. "When I first began this project, I decided there was no better way to understand pilots than by becoming one myself," he explained in a voiceover accompanying clips of himself taking flying lessons. "But it became clear very quickly that I was not a natural at this, especially when it came to landing the plane." While Fielder was told that most students master landings and are able to fly solo after about 10-30 hours of flight time, he still hadn't managed to prove his ability to his instructors' satisfaction by the time he had spent over 120 hours in the air. After witnessing another student pilot and their instructor fatally crash while he was in the sky above an airport for one of his own training sessions, Fielder took a month off to rehearse flying at home as a pilot who wasn't afraid of anything. Following that break, something clicked, and he was finally allowed to fly solo. But the roadblocks interfering with his plan didn't stop there. Considering you need 1,500 hours of flying experience to even be considered as a commercial airline pilot and Fielder had only racked up around 270-280 after two years, he realized he would need to utilize a loophole in the system that would require him to not only complete a FAA-approved 737 training course and obtain his own secondary-market passenger plane (on HBO's dime, of course), but also convince nearly 150 actors to pose as passengers on the flight to avoid regulations surrounding paying customers. Noting that, at the time, he was the least experienced person licensed to fly a 737 in North America, Fielder prepared for the big day by recruiting Aaron, one of the pilots he enlisted as a judge for his "Wings of Voice" singing competition earlier this season, as his co-pilot. He then laid out his objectives for the flight, which was set to take off from the San Bernardino airport and fly east to the Nevada border before looping back around to San Bernardino. "I'm trying to demonstrate how hard it can be for any pilot to say what they're thinking in a cockpit environment. And this dangerous phenomenon that leads to planes crashing I truly believe happens in some form on every single airline flight," he said. "Now, obviously with this flight, I don't want to let anything unsafe happen. So the second I see my co-pilot thinking something that he's not saying, you're going to get to see that. And then I'm going to quickly jump in and ask him about how he's feeling so he can share that with me and be comfortable sharing that. And nothing will be left unspoken." In the end, nothing of real consequence occurred in the cockpit during the flight. But after deplaning to applause and cheers from his group of actor-passengers, Fielder came to the conclusion that since no one sees what goes on in the cockpit anyway, "as long as you get everyone down safely, that's all it takes to be their hero." While Fielder is known for always committing to the bit, making the real-life stakes of his stunts truly bonkers, this time, they have never been higher. But he didn't even stop there, as the closing minutes of the finale revealed that, in his spare time, Fielder has also started working for a company that relocates empty 737s wherever they are around the world. Turns out, despite being a comedian, Fielder does have the capacity to be taken seriously. Or maybe, it simply all boils down to practice. As he put it earlier in the episode, "I've always believed that if you rehearse long enough and hard enough, nothing will be left to chance."
Metro
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
TV show contestant speaks out after losing $10,000 for fake singing competition
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video A unwitting contestant on Nathan Fielder's show The Rehearsal has revealed that she lost $10,000 (£7,600) because of the comedy series. Fielder, 42, is a comic director and producer who has become known for his high-cost docu-comedy series The Rehearsal, which first launched in 2022. The series stars Fielder as a fictionalised version of himself who creates scenarios where ordinary people will rehearse difficult life events using sets and actors to recreate real-life situations, without the participants realising they are in a fake scenario. However, one contestant has claimed that they lost out on a huge sum when offered the chance to appear in a singing competition, just to be duped by the show. Lana Love, who had previously appeared on The Voice, explained that she thought she was singing up for a new HBO singing competition titled Wings of Voice that would give her the opportunity to kickstart her career. Love told Variety: 'I signed up to be a singer, not a lab rat.' Love revealed that she wasn't allowed to discuss the show as she signed a non-disclosure agreement. 'I'm legally not allowed to have this conversation with you right now, because I signed an NDA,' she said, but argued that HBO didn't have 'ground to stand on' when it comes to retaliation. She claimed she spent $5,500 on travelling across LA and New York three times for auditions, she added that she also lost money on accommodation, hair and makeup and $4,000 in cancelled singing lessons. 'I've been through a lot in my time. I put in my 10,000 hours, and I felt like there wasn't a basic human respect for people who have devoted their lives to art,' she said. 'I was at square one again, after 15 years professionally in this business.' The New York-based singer-songwriter detailed the experience, which carried on for months in her interview and revealed that she eventually worked out the competition was fake and part of Fielder's series. She revealed that she tried to let other contestants know that they were being duped, but quickly realised that some still considered the gig an opportunity despite Wings of Voice not being a real show. The episode aired on HBO on April 27 and was the second episode in the second series. The episode was titled Star Potential, and the synopsis reads: 'Nathan creates Wings of Voice, a fake singing competition show to test airline co-pilots by asking them to judge and reject auditioning contestants.' More Trending The reaction to the series from viewers has been overwhelmingly positive, and the season has received a 97% ranking on Rotten Tomatoes. Joel Keller for The Decider said in his review: 'We have to give Nathan Fielder credit for how ambitious he is in the second season of The Rehearsal. What we wonder is if this is going to make for good comedy, given that's what HBO is paying him to produce.' 'That Season 2 convinced me it's an earnest effort to improve people's lives and a sidesplitting comedy and a moving emotional odyssey for Nathan, well, that's what makes 'The Rehearsal' Season 2 a cut above the vast majority of television,' said Ben Travers for The Indie Wire. HBO had nothing to add when reached out for comment. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. View More » MORE: WWE Raw star shades CM Punk over unwanted backstage accolade MORE: Amazon Prime fans rush to binge 'incredible' thriller axed 10 years ago MORE: Netflix viewers rush to watch 'exceptional' drama based on Judy Blume novel
New York Times
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘The Rehearsal' Is an Awkward, Dazzling Ride
The first season of HBO's 'The Rehearsal,' which aired in 2022, was an entrancing experiment. Created by and starring the comedian Nathan Fielder, the show began with a relatively simple but absurd premise: What if you could rehearse for events in your everyday life — like, for instance, having a difficult conversation with a friend? Eventually, the experiment turned into a large-scale simulation in which Fielder 'rehearsed' raising a kid, a feat that, because of child labor rules and an accelerated timeline, involved a rotating cast of child actors. The second season premieres on Sunday, anticipated by the question: How is Fielder is going to top that first brilliantly uncomfortable season? His answer is to turn his attention to the world of commercial airline safety, and what results is both sidesplitting and one of the most stressful television watching experiences in recent memory. The season revolves around Fielder's personal research into the causes of aviation disasters — a premise he admits isn't particularly ripe for a comedy. ('So far, I was failing,' he narrates in what is perhaps the show's first joke. 'We were over 10 minutes into this episode with zero laughs.') He has concluded that a primary cause of crashes is a lack of communication in the cockpit, where the second-in-command feels too intimidated to press his or her concerns with the captain. Fielder's solution? Getting the pilots to open up through his rehearsal methods involving professional actors. But in Fielder's universe, nothing is that straightforward. Working with real pilots and building a full-size replica of a Houston airport terminal, Fielder takes bizarrely hilarious detours. One involves a singing competition called 'Wings of Voice.' Another uses oversize puppets to examine the life of the 'Miracle on the Hudson' pilot Chesley Sullenberger. Fielder's life-or-death subject is distressingly topical, but 'The Rehearsal' is interested in more than aviation. It is a study of human behavior and the masks people wear, investigating the psychology not only of the pilots but also of the actors Fielder employs and, ultimately, of Fielder himself. Fielder draws from his own life more than ever — including in references to his other shows 'Nathan for You' and 'The Curse' — all while keeping the audience guessing about how much of what he is showing us is just a character. But his typically deadpan persona takes on new weight here. 'The Rehearsal' remains one of the best comedies out there, but what's at stake is no joke.
