The Rehearsal (TV series)

First released

Last released

1

6

July 15, 2022 (2022-07-15)

August 19, 2022 (2022-08-19)

2

6

April 20, 2025 (2025-04-20)

May 25, 2025 (2025-05-25)

1

1

"Orange Juice, No Pulp"

Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder

July 15, 2022 (2022-07-15)

0.055

Nathan Fielder helps Kor Skeete, a trivia-obsessed New Yorker who wants to confess to his bar trivia team that he lied about having a master's degree. Nathan reveals an elaborate method of rehearsals involving an actor (K. Todd Freeman) playing a "fake Kor". To help Kor rehearse the difficult conversation with his friend Tricia, Nathan creates simulations of trivia night with a fake Tricia in a full-scale replica of the Alligator Lounge, a Brooklyn bar. Kor overcomes his fears and makes his confession to the real Tricia, who responds with understanding. After Kor wins the trivia competition due to Nathan's trickery, Nathan faces anxiety over how people will react to his deceptions.

2

2

"Scion"

Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder, Carrie Kemper & Eric Notarnicola

July 22, 2022 (2022-07-22)

0.056

Nathan develops a rehearsal for Angela, a woman considering motherhood. Nathan hires child actors to simulate adopting and caring for a baby and sets her up in a rented farmhouse in rural Oregon. Due to Oregon child protection laws, Nathan's team must covertly switch out the baby every four hours and replace it with a robot baby at night. Seeking a simulated husband, Angela dates Robbin, a numerology-obsessed man who wants to have sex with Angela despite her devout Christian beliefs against premarital sex. When Robbin quits the project due to the robot baby's incessant crying, Nathan inserts himself into the experiment as Angela's non-romantic co-parent.

3

3

"Gold Digger"

Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder, Carrie Kemper & Eric Notarnicola

July 29, 2022 (2022-07-29)

0.117

Nathan and Angela accelerate their parenting rehearsal with three-year-old, then six-year-old actors portraying their fake son, "Adam". Angela refuses to participate in Halloween due to her belief in Satanic conspiracies. Nathan balances parenting duties with a rehearsal for Patrick, a man who wants to confront his brother over their late grandfather's will, which bans Patrick from inheriting money if he is dating a "gold digger". The rehearsal occurs in a replica Raising Cane's restaurant in a warehouse next to the relocated Alligator Lounge. To introduce real emotions to the rehearsal, Nathan stages a scenario to convince Patrick that he could inherit buried gold from the grandfather of Isaac, the actor who plays Patrick's brother. After Patrick has an emotional breakthrough during a rehearsal, he leaves the production and never returns. Nathan narrates that he is envious that self-deception is easy for some people as he ponders his fake family.

4

4

"The Fielder Method"

Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder, Carrie Kemper & Eric Notarnicola

August 5, 2022 (2022-08-05)

0.087

To recruit actors for his rehearsals, Nathan opens an acting studio in Los Angeles, teaching "the Fielder Method", which involves covertly observing and imitating unaware subjects. Feeling insecure about his own performance, Nathan reenacts the class with actors and a fake Nathan as the teacher while the real Nathan plays the role of Thomas, a student. Nathan makes his students immerse themselves in other people's lives while he immerses himself in Thomas's life, even living in Thomas's home. Nathan returns to Oregon, where his "son", Adam, is now a teenager. Nathan and Joshua, the actor playing Adam, decide that Adam should lash out due to resentment of his absentee father and develop a drug problem, a situation that mirrors Angela's own past. Adam suffers an overdose and is tended to by emergency responders played by Thomas and another Fielder Method graduate. After he runs away from home, the 15-year-old Adam reverts to a 6-year-old since Nathan plans to relive his son's earlier years.

5

5

"Apocalypto"

Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder, Carrie Kemper & Eric Notarnicola

August 12, 2022 (2022-08-12)

0.069

Nathan decides to practice his own assertiveness in relationships by challenging Angela over their son's religious upbringing. Angela, a fervent Christian, refuses to allow Adam to be raised in Nathan's Jewish faith, so Nathan secretly brings his son to lessons with a tutor in Judaism under the pretense of swimming lessons. Seeking solace outside the house, Nathan opens his replica Alligator Lounge to the public under the name Nate's Lizard Lounge. The co-parents argue over a comedy skit featuring six-year-old Adam as "Dr. Fart" and a joke about eating feces, which Angela claims is a Satanic practice. Nathan rehearses the confrontations with a fake Angela, and in one scenario, she harshly criticizes Nathan's emotional detachment and questions the ethics of the entire production. However, in their real final confrontation, Angela simply decides to quit the rehearsal. Nathan continues to raise Adam, now as a single parent.

6

6

"Pretend Daddy"

Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder, Carrie Kemper & Eric Notarnicola

August 19, 2022 (2022-08-19)

0.117

Nathan stages a ninth birthday party for Adam, but faces a problem when Remy, one of the child actors who played Adam at age six, becomes attached to Nathan, calling him "daddy" even after his scenes are over. Remy's mother explains that her son might have trouble understanding the difference between acting and reality. To discover what went wrong, Nathan repeats Remy's scenes with different actors including Liam (a nine-year-old Adam actor), an adult actor, and a mannequin. He then explores what might have happened if Angela had stayed with him and meets with the real Angela, who urges him to forgive himself, as her religious beliefs state. In an attempt to truly understand the connection between parent and child, Nathan stages a new scenario in which he is Remy's mother Amber and Liam portrays Remy. They re-create the experience of appearing on The Rehearsal and becoming attached to "pretend daddy" Nathan. After coming to the emotional realization that they should not have done the show, Nathan as Amber seemingly breaks character and tells the fake Remy, "I'm your dad."

7

1

"Gotta Have Fun"

Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder, Carrie Kemper, Adam Locke-Norton & Eric Notarnicola

April 20, 2025 (2025-04-20)

0.129

Nathan Fielder studies airliner black box transcripts in which the first officer feels too intimidated to challenge the captain, leading to fatal crashes due to pilot error. He discusses this with John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member, who had once recommended roleplay simulation to improve pilot communication. Nathan considers the dilemma of balancing his "somewhat sincere" effort to improve air safety against expectations that he is making a comedy show. Nathan meets with Moody, an airline first officer who is willing to participate in simulations. When his film crew is denied entry at a terminal while shadowing Moody at work, Nathan builds a partial re-creation of the George Bush Intercontinental Airport terminal, staffed with actors who use the Fielder Method to imitate real employees. There, Moody role-plays interactions with an actor playing a captain. To test Moody's assertiveness, Nathan arranges a conversation between Moody and his girlfriend Cindy, a Starbucks barista whom he worries is being hit on by customers. They confront their relationship issues in a simulated cockpit with Cindy dressed as a captain, an exercise which ends awkwardly.

8

2

"Star Potential"

Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder, Carrie Kemper, Adam Locke-Norton & Eric Notarnicola

April 27, 2025 (2025-04-27)

0.111

Nathan creates Wings of Voice, a fake singing competition show to test airline co-pilots by asking them to judge and reject auditioning contestants. The scenario is inspired by an emotionally taxing job Nathan himself once performed as a junior producer on Canadian Idol. After Nathan asks the rejected contestants to rate their judges' performance, he tries to emulate Mara'D, the co-pilot with the highest likeability score. Mara'D demonstrates her ability to deflect unwanted personal attention from Jeff, a captain who has been banned from numerous dating apps. Nathan also explores his own failure to assertively confront the streaming service Paramount+ over their removal of the second episode of the third season of Nathan for You due to the inclusion of Summit Ice Apparel and their classification of antisemitism as a "sensitive" topic after the Gaza war began in 2023. To continue his attempts at performing sincerity, Nathan gives an inspiring speech to a teenage girl who was rejected at the audition.

9

3

"Pilot's Code"

Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder, Carrie Kemper, Adam Locke-Norton & Eric Notarnicola

May 4, 2025 (2025-05-04)

0.085

Nathan helps Bogdan and Monique, a couple who have cloned their late dog Achilles, but are unsatisfied that the clones behave differently. Nathan places the cloned dogs into a re-creation of the original Achilles' 2011-era upbringing. Applying this concept to human behavior, Nathan uses himself as a test subject to replicate the personality of heroic pilot Sully Sullenberger. In a simulation that Nathan acknowledges may seem "weird," he relives portions of Sully's life from infancy, created with oversized sets, puppets, stilt-walking actors, and robots. Knowing that pilots often avoid mental health diagnoses out of fear of losing their license, Nathan examines passages from Sully's memoir, claiming that Sully likely avoided discussing his emotional struggles and listened to music on his iPod to cope with repressed emotions. Nathan presents a theory that Sully could have been listening to "Bring Me to Life" by one of his favorite bands Evanescence during the "Miracle on the Hudson" landing.

10

4

"Kissme"

Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder, Carrie Kemper, Adam Locke-Norton & Eric Notarnicola

May 11, 2025 (2025-05-11)

0.102

To explore interpersonal communication with pilots, Nathan begins a project around Colin, a first officer who finds dating awkward. Nathan introduces an exercise he calls "The Pack" in which a crowd of actors surround Colin and mimic his actions as he goes through simulations of romantic encounters. Nathan secretly encourages actors in the pack to pursue Colin in real life if they have a genuine attraction. Colin goes on a date with one of the actresses named Emma, and Nathan creates five copies of Colin's apartment while casting actors to rehearse their relationship. The actor couples are encouraged to improvise kissing, aided by an intimacy coordinator. When Colin and Emma's relationship stalls over reading the signals for a first kiss, Nathan casts them in a fictional scene that ends with a kiss, explaining that the artifice of acting gives people permission to do things they normally would not. This culminates in Colin kissing Emma (albeit on the cheek).

11

5

"Washington"

Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder, Carrie Kemper, Adam Locke-Norton & Eric Notarnicola

May 18, 2025 (2025-05-18)

0.079

Nathan rehearses a hearing of the Congressional Subcommittee on Aviation, where he presents his findings on pilot communication. As a comedian, Nathan struggles with appearing serious to Congress, so he decides to emphasize online discourse about how season one of The Rehearsal resonated with the autistic experience. He hopes to secure a meeting with Congressman Steve Cohen, an autism advocate and Ranking Member of the Aviation Subcommittee. Nathan ingratiates himself with Doreen Granpeesheh of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders to position himself as a "thought leader" in the field, though he tries to deflect any implication that he himself may be autistic. Going into Congressman Cohen's office without rehearsing, Nathan proposes that pilots should participate in an acting exercise before each flight, which would psychologically give permission for first officers to speak up in the event of a crisis. Cohen is not convinced, and suggests that such exercises should be left at the discretion of individual airlines.

12

6

"My Controls"

Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder, Carrie Kemper, Adam Locke-Norton & Eric Notarnicola

May 25, 2025 (2025-05-25)

0.088

Over the course of two years, Nathan obtains a commercial pilot's license and trains in a simulator to fly a Boeing 737. Though he is not experienced enough to obtain the license to operate airline flights, with a commercial rating Nathan is allowed to fly passengers and recruits a full cabin of actors willing to simulate a regularly scheduled airline flight. Because pilots must disclose mental health conditions, Nathan undergoes a fMRI brain scan to potentially detect anxiety and autism. Fearing that his flight might be cancelled, Nathan claims to not have those conditions before learning his test results. To document problems with pilot communication, Nathan films himself in the cockpit with his first officer Aaron, an experienced pilot with aspirations to be a TV producer. Nathan successfully pilots the 737 from San Bernardino International Airport to the Nevada border and back, emerging to applause from the actors. This flight has been called by some "The Miracle over the Mojave". Later, Nathan shares that he has been occasionally working as a ferry pilot for an aviation transport company relocating 737s around the world and seemingly declining to learn the results of his brain scan. He claims to be fine because "no one is allowed in the cockpit if there's something wrong with them."

Cinema Eye Honors

2022

Heterodox Award

Nathan Fielder

Nominated

Gotham Independent Film Awards

2022

Breakthrough Nonfiction Series

Nathan Fielder, Dave Paige, Dan McManus, and Christie Smith

Nominated

Independent Spirit Awards

2023

Best New Non-Scripted or Documentary Series

Nathan Fielder, Dave Paige, Dan McManus, Christie Smith, Carrie Kemper, and Eric Notarnicola

Won

Primetime Emmy Awards

2025

Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series

Nathan Fielder (for "Pilot's Code")

Nominated

Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series

Nathan Fielder, Carrie Kemper, Adam Locke-Norton, and Eric Notarnicola (for "Pilot's Code")

Nominated

Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards

2025

Outstanding Picture Editing for a Single-Camera Comedy Series

Adam Locke-Norton (for "My Controls")

Nominated

Stacy Moon (for "Pilot's Code")

Nominated

Television Critics Association Awards

2023

Outstanding Achievement in Reality Programming

The Rehearsal

Nominated