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What do you get when you combine a chronically deadpan expression, Seth Rogen’s high-school improv partner and a graduate of “one of Canada’s top business schools with really good grades” into one person? None other than Nathan Fielder. Scoring his first big break on the reality series Nathan for You in 2013, the 42-year-old has steadily made a name for himself mining the unsightly quirks of the human psyche. Through his bone-dry wit and anxiety-wrought set-ups, he holds a mirror to the performative nature of our everyday existence. 

No stranger to virality, Fielder’s success lies in his willingness to probe his own vulnerabilities – not just as the by-product but as the butt of the joke. Whether he’s creating poo-flavoured frozen yoghurt or setting up an acting school to teach his dubious “Fielder Method”, we find ourselves incapable of looking away. We become complicit in a perverse fascination with just how far he will go and how bad it can get, since life itself is a similarly embarrassing affair. If we cringe, it’s only because we can all too easily see ourselves in his shoes. Yet, as the Vancouverite shows us time and time again, things tend to have a way of working themselves out if we just commit to the bit. 

Hence why, three years since its debut, Fielder now returns with a follow-up to his Independent Spirit Award-winning docu-comedy The Rehearsal. As season two, airs, AnOther recommends six key works from the mastermind comedian. 

Fresh-faced and armed with a microphone, Fielder got his start on the Canadian mock news programme This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Lasting from 2007 to 2009, the consumer report segment Nathan on Your Side saw him tearing across the country interviewing random people on a variety of topics, from presidential candidates to tall clubs to MP3 players. In one episode, Fielder consults a marketing professor on how sex is used in advertising to manipulate the public, only for the interaction to spiral into him coaxing the unwitting participant to confess he’s more attracted to Jennifer Aniston than to his own wife. All the makings of his iconic Nathan for You alter ego are here – the inexplicable manner, the vacant stare and the knack for dealing with discomfort by doubling down on it. 

Over Nathan for You’s four seasons, Fielder plays a consultant hoping to save struggling businesses with wildly convoluted and totally impractical solutions. Whether it’s exploiting parody law to rename a coffee shop “Dumb Starbucks” or orchestrating to have himself pulled over for speeding so that he can tell a witty anecdote on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the Comedy Central hit revels in its own farce. 

But beneath this lies something more piercing: a reflection on loneliness, desperation and the bleakness baked into 21st-century consumer culture. Amidst all the stunts, Nathan for You adopts an unexpected layer of warmth, seeking to forge connection in a world built on artifice. The result is a cult phenomenon that has earned Fielder a Writers Guild of America Award and lifelong comedic clout. 

If you find yourself crying instead of laughing during a sketch, you might think the comic hasn’t done his job. For Fielder, it’s just part of the experience. This is no truer than in Finding Frances, the feature-length series finale of Nathan for You, where he helps 78-year-old Bill Heath track down a long-lost sweetheart. The pair stage auditions for a nonexistent Mud sequel and fake a 57-year high school reunion, all to procure a surprisingly cathartic – if not mildly awkward – phone call between the estranged pair. 

Hailed by The New York Times as one of the most memorable television episodes of 2017, Fielder presents a profound meditation on love and longing. As a parallel story unfolds between himself and an escort named Maci, it becomes tricky to identify where the show ends and reality begins. In the last few moments, she asks: “You’re filming something, that’s kind of the purpose, isn’t it?” That Fielder doesn’t (or can’t) give a definitive answer is a testament to the show evolving into something much bigger than it ever set out to be. 

Though not its creator, How To With John Wilson is a notable entry in Fielder’s catalogue. Serving as executive producer after meeting Wilson by chance in 2018, the series went on to receive several Primetime Emmy nominations and paved the way for Fielder’s increasingly experimental post-Nathan for You career. 

From how to make risotto to how to like what you see in the mirror, each episode is designed as a tutorial, with Wilson dispensing oh-so-sage advice while quietly unravelling his own neuroses. Ambling through the streets of New York, he strikes up conversations with zany characters and captures eccentric vignettes of city life (the pilot features actor Kyle MacLachlan struggling to swipe his MetroCard on the subway). The fun of it all is not knowing where he’ll land – at a Mandela effect conference in Idaho, or perhaps at the home of Bang Energy CEO Jack Owoc? Filled with existential tangents and offbeat sincerity, it’s clear that Fielder and Wilson have found a shared language through this collaboration. 

Billed by HBO as “a series about the lengths one man will go to reduce the uncertainties of everyday life”, The Rehearsal is an utter feat of television. Marking Fielder’s return to acting and directing after a five-year hiatus, the docu-comedy cum social experiment doesn’t so much elicit laugh-out-loud moments as it does genuine awe.

The premise of the show is simple: the protagonist enlists ordinary people on Craigslist facing difficult life events and prepares them by rehearsing all possible outcomes. In the bulk of the episodes, he helps a woman decide if she wants to have children by building her a house and hiring multiple child actors to play her son. Rooted in a curiosity about our often irrational yet instinctual behaviours, The Rehearsal reveals how ready we are to deceive ourselves in the face of the unknown. But as Fielder eventually comes to understand, “life’s better with surprises”. 

“We’re certified Fresh!!!!! Don’t miss out!” is the sort of ringing, albeit self-endorsement, you would expect from a drama co-created by Fielder and Uncut Gems co-director Benny Safdie. Consisting of ten hour-long episodes, The Curse is Fielder’s first fully scripted foray, offering a blistering satire of white wokeness, gentrification and the pretensions of the art world. Bathed in a vaguely menacing synth score, it explores how an alleged curse ruins the relationship of newly married couple Asher (Fielder) and Whitney (Emma Stone) during the filming of their house-flipping reality show. 

The Curse is dense and tonally indecipherable (spoiler: the finale gets positively Lynchian as Asher gets sucked upwards to his death), while somehow managing to be one of the most daring and transfixing shows put to television. It’s also a hint at Fielder’s growing ambition to chart new territory – one where comedy can be transcended without being relinquished. 

Season two of The Rehearsal is streaming now. 

What do you get when you combine a chronically deadpan expression, Seth Rogen’s high-school improv partner and a graduate of “one of Canada’s top business schools with really good grades” into one person? None other than Nathan Fielder. Scoring his first big break on the reality series Nathan for You in 2013, the 42-year-old has steadily made a name for himself mining the unsightly quirks of the human psyche. Through his bone-dry wit and anxiety-wrought set-ups, he holds a mirror to the performative nature of our everyday existence. 

No stranger to virality, Fielder’s success lies in his willingness to probe his own vulnerabilities – not just as the by-product but as the butt of the joke. Whether he’s creating poo-flavoured frozen yoghurt or setting up an acting school to teach his dubious “Fielder Method”, we find ourselves incapable of looking away. We become complicit in a perverse fascination with just how far he will go and how bad it can get, since life itself is a similarly embarrassing affair. If we cringe, it’s only because we can all too easily see ourselves in his shoes. Yet, as the Vancouverite shows us time and time again, things tend to have a way of working themselves out if we just commit to the bit. 

Hence why, three years since its debut, Fielder now returns with a follow-up to his Independent Spirit Award-winning docu-comedy The Rehearsal. As season two, airs, AnOther recommends six key works from the mastermind comedian. 

Fresh-faced and armed with a microphone, Fielder got his start on the Canadian mock news programme This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Lasting from 2007 to 2009, the consumer report segment Nathan on Your Side saw him tearing across the country interviewing random people on a variety of topics, from presidential candidates to tall clubs to MP3 players. In one episode, Fielder consults a marketing professor on how sex is used in advertising to manipulate the public, only for the interaction to spiral into him coaxing the unwitting participant to confess he’s more attracted to Jennifer Aniston than to his own wife. All the makings of his iconic Nathan for You alter ego are here – the inexplicable manner, the vacant stare and the knack for dealing with discomfort by doubling down on it. 

Over Nathan for You’s four seasons, Fielder plays a consultant hoping to save struggling businesses with wildly convoluted and totally impractical solutions. Whether it’s exploiting parody law to rename a coffee shop “Dumb Starbucks” or orchestrating to have himself pulled over for speeding so that he can tell a witty anecdote on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the Comedy Central hit revels in its own farce. 

But beneath this lies something more piercing: a reflection on loneliness, desperation and the bleakness baked into 21st-century consumer culture. Amidst all the stunts, Nathan for You adopts an unexpected layer of warmth, seeking to forge connection in a world built on artifice. The result is a cult phenomenon that has earned Fielder a Writers Guild of America Award and lifelong comedic clout. 

If you find yourself crying instead of laughing during a sketch, you might think the comic hasn’t done his job. For Fielder, it’s just part of the experience. This is no truer than in Finding Frances, the feature-length series finale of Nathan for You, where he helps 78-year-old Bill Heath track down a long-lost sweetheart. The pair stage auditions for a nonexistent Mud sequel and fake a 57-year high school reunion, all to procure a surprisingly cathartic – if not mildly awkward – phone call between the estranged pair. 

Hailed by The New York Times as one of the most memorable television episodes of 2017, Fielder presents a profound meditation on love and longing. As a parallel story unfolds between himself and an escort named Maci, it becomes tricky to identify where the show ends and reality begins. In the last few moments, she asks: “You’re filming something, that’s kind of the purpose, isn’t it?” That Fielder doesn’t (or can’t) give a definitive answer is a testament to the show evolving into something much bigger than it ever set out to be. 

Though not its creator, How To With John Wilson is a notable entry in Fielder’s catalogue. Serving as executive producer after meeting Wilson by chance in 2018, the series went on to receive several Primetime Emmy nominations and paved the way for Fielder’s increasingly experimental post-Nathan for You career. 

From how to make risotto to how to like what you see in the mirror, each episode is designed as a tutorial, with Wilson dispensing oh-so-sage advice while quietly unravelling his own neuroses. Ambling through the streets of New York, he strikes up conversations with zany characters and captures eccentric vignettes of city life (the pilot features actor Kyle MacLachlan struggling to swipe his MetroCard on the subway). The fun of it all is not knowing where he’ll land – at a Mandela effect conference in Idaho, or perhaps at the home of Bang Energy CEO Jack Owoc? Filled with existential tangents and offbeat sincerity, it’s clear that Fielder and Wilson have found a shared language through this collaboration. 

Billed by HBO as “a series about the lengths one man will go to reduce the uncertainties of everyday life”, The Rehearsal is an utter feat of television. Marking Fielder’s return to acting and directing after a five-year hiatus, the docu-comedy cum social experiment doesn’t so much elicit laugh-out-loud moments as it does genuine awe.

The premise of the show is simple: the protagonist enlists ordinary people on Craigslist facing difficult life events and prepares them by rehearsing all possible outcomes. In the bulk of the episodes, he helps a woman decide if she wants to have children by building her a house and hiring multiple child actors to play her son. Rooted in a curiosity about our often irrational yet instinctual behaviours, The Rehearsal reveals how ready we are to deceive ourselves in the face of the unknown. But as Fielder eventually comes to understand, “life’s better with surprises”. 

“We’re certified Fresh!!!!! Don’t miss out!” is the sort of ringing, albeit self-endorsement, you would expect from a drama co-created by Fielder and Uncut Gems co-director Benny Safdie. Consisting of ten hour-long episodes, The Curse is Fielder’s first fully scripted foray, offering a blistering satire of white wokeness, gentrification and the pretensions of the art world. Bathed in a vaguely menacing synth score, it explores how an alleged curse ruins the relationship of newly married couple Asher (Fielder) and Whitney (Emma Stone) during the filming of their house-flipping reality show. 

The Curse is dense and tonally indecipherable (spoiler: the finale gets positively Lynchian as Asher gets sucked upwards to his death), while somehow managing to be one of the most daring and transfixing shows put to television. It’s also a hint at Fielder’s growing ambition to chart new territory – one where comedy can be transcended without being relinquished. 

Season two of The Rehearsal is streaming now.