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Topics: Comedy, Entertainment, HBO, Reality TV, TV
Sarah Halle Corey
In a Season 2 episode of Nathan Fielder’s HBO series The Rehearsal, he’s talking to an actor he wants to work with and explains that he’s making “a somewhat sincere effort to explore and develop new ways to improve pilot communication in the cockpit.” When the actor asks Nathan to clarify and asks if he’s making a documentary, Nathan responds, “I mean, I would use that term loosely, but yeah.”
Like most of Nathan Fielder’s interactions, that one seems to leave everyone with more questions than answers, namely: Is The Rehearsal a documentary or not? ICYMI, The Rehearsal is a docu-comedy series from Nathan Fielder (of Nathan For You fame) where he attempts to help real people “rehearse” for real-life events by staging recreations of situations where they can practice. In season 1, that meant creating a fake family to practice raising a child. And in season 2, it was all about helping airplane pilots speak up and make flying safer.
For Nathan, he really was trying to help make flying safer while also entertaining audiences watching his show. He told Vulture, “Sometimes I like putting myself in a situation where I have to genuinely dig myself out of a hole, and I don’t really know how to. Something like this would be a challenge for me because people don’t want to take me seriously in any way. It would be an actual challenge if I had to try to somewhat convey these ideas in a real way but, at the same time, entertain. I thought that would lead to an interesting tone that was new that we haven’t done yet.”
So, Nathan definitely had some genuine intentions with this show. But still, how much of The Rehearsal is real? Let’s investigate.
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It’s really hard to answer whether or not The Rehearsal is real because the answer is kind of? Sort of? Depends on who you ask? One of the key points of the show is to play with the concept of reality, as Nathan and his crew create fake situations that feel genuine. Most people involved are aware that they’re playing pretend within a constructed scenario. However, in some of these instances, some people involved are unaware that any of it’s fake, and it all seems very real to them.
For example, in season 2 of The Rehearsal, Nathan hosted a fake singing competition called “Wings of Voice,” where people auditioned in front of airplane pilots who acted as judges. Apparently, the over 1,000 people who auditioned really thought they were taking part in an actual singing competition. And now they’re pissed off their time was wasted. Understandably so!
One contestant allegedly lost $10,000 via costs of flights and other fees to participate in the social experiment… that she didn’t know was a social experiment. She told Variety, “I signed up to be a singer, not a lab rat.”
So, yes, The Rehearsal does seem to be real, for the most part. The real question is who knew what was real and what wasn’t while they were making it.