“And how is it for you, Nathan, moving from—”
And Christopher Nolan takes the slightest, tiniest pause. He’s thinking. He’s at the front of a movie theater, mic in hand, and he’s thinking. It’s late January 2024, and he has agreed to moderate a post-screening Q&A for a friend. Nolan looks like he always does: strong swoop in the hair, the silver starting to win. And like Steven Spielberg before him, this is a filmmaker who understands the importance of layering. Nolan’s got a blazer over a shawl-collared vest? A shawl-collared cardigan? A shawl-collared blazer? I don’t know. He’s enshawled, OK? He’s enshawled, and he looks great. He looks, and this is a compliment, like he would be very comfortable around both sheep and goats. On the screen behind him, in hot-red letters: The Curse. To his left are Benny Safdie and Nathan Fielder. Nolan’s hunting for a description, a definition, some way to put into language what Fielder does. He gives up.
“—I don’t even know what to call what it is that you’ve done in the past, so I’m not going to try and put a name on it.”
Like most Americans, I first became aware of Fielder via his Comedy Central series, Nathan for You. Maybe it was the shit-flavored frozen yogurt that first brought me into the fold? Or was it the goat-saving hero pig? Hard to say. But Canadians knew about him long before he was helping struggling small business owners make it in this competitive world. From 2008 to 2009, Fielder was a correspondent for a mock news show on CBC called This Hour Has 22 Minutes. He had his own recurring segment, “Nathan on Your Side.” He interviewed ghost experts, CPAC attendees, certified workplace ethics coaches; I’m not going to name them all. His segments felt like abstracted spiritual precursors to Nathan for You, the straight-faced discomfort already flowing.
By 2010, Fielder was a consulting writer for the MTV Movie Awards. You might remember this as the year Les Grossman was everywhere. Lotta Grossman, great big heaps of him. Lord of the Dance, that guy. Turn on the Luda, and that ass gets to shaking. Check out his nimble hips. Check out his hairy hands. It’s unclear whether Fielder was able to give notes on the sketch in which Les tells Robert Pattinson to wash his hair with dirt, but a man can dream.
More From the World of Nathan Fielder
By 2011, Fielder was a staff writer and sometimes performer on two short-lived Comedy Central series: Season 2 of Important Things With Demetri Martin and the lone season of Jon Benjamin Has a Van. Two years later, Nathan for You came twirling into our lives.
It’s hard to write about comedy. You wind up just sort of repeating the jokes and editorializing. This part was so funny. I loved this bit. Oh, remember that part? Everything starts sounding a little too close to The Chris Farley Show. (That was awesome.) I find myself wanting to do this with Fielder’s stuff, just rattle off a list of my favorite bits.
But Fielder is also hard to write about in a different way, because what’s going on with this guy? Nolan wasn’t lying. Fielder’s comedy is singular and tough to describe. His work does not conform to traditional television structures. It is new and strange, almost disorienting. Watch anything he’s done, and questions sprint through your brain. How is this happening? Why is this person agreeing to this? Where did Fielder find them? They know this is going to be on TV, right? How is he not breaking? Does that puppet have working, milk-laden breasts?
Fielder will wring everything he can out of an idea and take things further than you ever fathomed possible. He uses every part of the buffalo. Then he’ll bring in another buffalo and use every part of it. Then he’ll bring in more buffalo, like four or five, and use every part of them. Then he will build a herd of towering, papier-mâché buffalo controlled by puppeteers dressed like ninjas and use every part of them.
He is also going to make you feel uncomfortable. He is going to surprise you. He is going to be curious. He is going to be patient. He is going to struggle to connect. He’s a prankster sociologist studying the effects of cameras and the ways they make people unravel. At times, his stuff makes me laugh like I have gone mad. A delirious, overwhelming, sleepover laugh. Other times I get so anxious my body starts to curl in on itself until I involuntarily roly-poly.
Friday marks the release date for Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s new documentary, You Can See Everything. It’s Fielder’s first feature-length film, an almost three-hour look at disgraced Theranos founder and vest superfan Elizabeth Holmes. Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, invited Fielder and Oppenheim to basically move into their home and document Holmes’s final month before she went into the clink.
(No, I don’t know why her eyes are like that, and yes, they do freak me out, very much. No pair of peepers has needed a blink more.)
The film has received glittering reviews and may well be a player come Oscar season. This means more Nathan Fielder on your many screens. If you’re unfamiliar and find yourself wondering what this guy’s deal is and how we ended up here, we’ve got you covered. Here are some of his most essential works.
“Dumb Starbucks,” Nathan for You
Probably the biggest thing to come out of Nathan for You, or at least the most viral. The entire episode—in which Fielder tries to help a struggling coffee shop by renaming it Dumb Starbucks—is a blast, but the sequence I’d call your attention to is the one where Fielder tries to get an appearance release form back from a lawyer who did not read the form before signing and hadn’t realized there was a clause in the fine print saying that the lawyer would also be liable if Starbucks sued. At one point, Fielder leaps over the desk to try to grab the form away from the guy. At another point, he talks the lawyer into holding the form up for the cameras, then tries to snatch it away again. Attorney Peter J. Marx sums it all up pretty well: “You know, I’m about to—I don’t know if you’re provoking me or not, but I’m getting tired of this.”
“Thin Watermelon”
This video is 31 seconds long. There is no dialogue, music, or narrative. The only sound is the wind. Fielder holds a slice of watermelon so thin that it sways in the breeze. He stares down the barrel of the camera. He stares at your soul.
Sully, The Rehearsal
The Season 2 episode of The Rehearsal about the famed pilot is a masterpiece and one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. Fielder wants to understand Sully’s frame of mind during the Miracle on the Hudson, and in order to do that, he decides he has to live Sully’s life. In order to do that, things get elaborate and strange. Fielder first portrays Sully as a literal baby.
“It was difficult at first to inhabit the mind of a baby. I know so much more than babies do, and it can be hard to forget all that stuff. So I tried not to think about the fact that I was a 41-year-old man and just did my best to be present in the moment.”
Fielder then goes on to portray Sully throughout his life, from diapers to the cockpit. Hulking, oversize sets are built so that his world is to scale—larger than he is, the same way it would be for a kid. His father is played by a man on stilts. As teenage Sully, Fielder sweeps a church floor and struggles to flirt with a girl. Later, he will give her a ride in a plane and try to replicate the amorous feelings Sully felt while up in the sky with her. Of course, this leads to Fielder replacing the actress playing the girlfriend with a dummy so that he can get aroused without making her uncomfortable. This leads to what might be the highlight of Season 2: when Sully discovers Evanescence.
Summit Ice, Nathan for You
From Season 3 of Nathan for You, Summit Ice is the first outdoor apparel company to openly promote the true story of the Holocaust. Fielder started it after the company that made his old jacket, Taiga, featured a Holocaust denier in its catalog. So Fielder founded his own brand and went on Conan to promote it.
“We’re all about quality. … The jacket’s water resistant, it’s got a two-way stretch, very breathable, and, you know, that 6 million Jews did die. You know, we want, we’re all about the quality and getting those facts out, believing the facts. … It’s a cool jacket. It’s a good, quality jacket, but 6 million Jews did die, and, you know, that number is important, and we do want to make people aware of that.”
Out on the Town
One of the finest posts the internet has ever produced. A stone-cold classic.
The Backup Guest
Fielder gets booked to go on Conan to promote Nathan for You, but he’s worried he’s a bad talk show guest, so he brings out Susan Sarandon as a “backup.” She walks out with him, sits next to him on the couch.
“This is an Oscar-winning actress. She has an amazing career. She’s been doing stuff for decades. She has so many great stories about things from the industry or her life that are really exciting. So she’s a great backup, and, you know, if it’s not going well, you have that option.”
Fielder goes on to tell an anecdote that starts with “I have two adorable cats named Rocket and Jackie.” At no point during his appearance does Sarandon speak. She is on the couch for less than five minutes and leaves without saying a word. At the end of the interview, they are supposed to play a clip from Nathan for You; instead, they show the ending of Thelma & Louise.
Numbers Guy, The Rehearsal
In a universe of entertaining people that Fielder has found, Numbers Guy is one of the most entertaining. He wears camo, he’s into numerology, and his roommate hates him—he’s a star. Some of my favorite lines:
- Thirty-three: “Thirty-three miles till empty. Jesus Christ is crucified at 33.”
- Fifty-five: “Fifty-five on the mileage. Big change, transformation. And grace.”
- Twenty-two: “Uh, 22. Turning all dreams and desires into reality.”
- Eighty-eight: “Oh wow, it just said 88. I looked at it when it said 88 … 88, new beginnings.”
Frozen Yogurt, Nathan for You
From the pilot—the one that started it all. If Dumb Starbucks isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Nathan for You, it’s probably shit-flavored frozen yogurt. The entire segment is sparkling, but let’s focus here on Fielder’s argument with the PR guy. Nobody riles people up like he does. A conversation that begins with the PR guy, Tyler Barnett, saying, “I think if you really are considering implementing a shit-flavored ice cream you should reconsider the entire campaign,” ends with Fielder saying, “I don’t understand the amount … seeing the amount of penises, how that would have to do with you having a small penis.”
In the end, Tyler Barnett PR did not take Fielder on as a client.
Private Investigator, Nathan for You
“Are you done having your tantrum?” is up there with some of Fielder’s greatest reactions. Fielder is at his best when the person he is interacting with has genuine contempt for him. All the better if they think he’s stupid. I would watch a 10-hour livestream of Fielder and private investigator Brian Wolfe taking a road trip across the United States.
Jumbotron Fielder
Fielder on The Situation Room
For this interview promoting Season 2 of The Rehearsal, Fielder wore a blue baseball cap that says “737” on the front. He is wearing this because he flew a 737 for the Miracle Over the Mojave. Regarding the FAA not agreeing with his assessment that communication in the cockpit is an issue, Fielder tells Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown: “That’s dumb. They’re dumb.”
