Does Nathan Fielder Not Know He's Autistic?
Or is he just playing with us, again?
**Disclaimer: This article is for creative and interpretive purposes. There is no confirmation or public documentation that Nathan Fielder has been diagnosed with ASD. LOL.**
Last night’s episode of The Rehearsal (Season 2, Episode 5) took another unpredictable turn, as this chaotic and inevitably unpredictable show does and it’s got me acting like Charlie Kelly trying to figure out who Pepe Silvia is.
But instead of this episode turning another full-body cringe corner, this one landed on something surprisingly wholesome and leaving some people confused.
If you are unfamiliar with the show The Rehearsal on HBO, it stars Nathan Fiedler, a comedian in his own right, who is known for exposing the lack of awareness, hostility, or outright dumbness of some people and businesses through uncomfortable interactions, and overall pushing boundaries of what can be done as long as cameras are filming and it’s for a show. He does this as himself serving as the provoker to these people while acting clueless to most of his gestures, ideas, or created scenarios. To many fans and viewers, Fielder has been playing a bit almost his whole life… Or has he?
His monotone voice, and inability to smoothly converse with others, and awkward sense of self makes others terribly uncomfortable, which, in turn, makes for his signature brand of comedy and sub-genre of cringe-comedy.
What makes his shows— where he is the face and lead of the program—smart and enjoyable, is his self awareness. Even after watching his old YouTube sketches from college where he makes skits of scenarios based on his familiar off-putting self, Fielder to me has always been this way. And thank god, ‘cause he’s HOT AF to me (and to many others) because of this.
Ahem, sorry moving on. Anyway, I’ve come to believe that he has embraced his awkwardness and used it (maybe even enhancing it for the sake of TV, sure) to his advantage. The brilliance of it is that he blurs the lines between reality and fiction and exposed how neurotypical people often react and treat people who are neurodivergent whether they know it about the person or not.
But in Fielder’s most recent project, The Rehearsal, it explores the lengths one person will go to reduce the uncertainties of everyday life. He gives the opportunity to people to be able to rehearse certain sceneiros in their life to prepare for the real life scenario to come. It is literally in the title. Fielder stars as the director of rehearsals, which are highly elaborately staged scenes down the finest detail. A construction crew, a legion of actors and seemingly unlimited resources all come together to allow ordinary people to rehearse for these moments by giving them the opportunity to play them out in carefully crafted simulations of Fielder's own design.
It is quite literally every autistic person’s dream… and for Fielder to come up with this naturally as something he had said he’s always wanted to implement in his own life, it seems deeply personal.
Fielder has struck success from his prior show Nathan For You, his directorial credit in How To With John Wilson, amongst other credits for successful films, and most recently starred in a show where he debuted his “real acting” skills alongside Emma Stone in the thriller black-comedy, The Curse, which was written by both Fielder and Benny Safdie. Because of the success of The Curse at the time of the filming of The Rehearsal season 2, he was green-lit for an even higher budget by HBO which gave him even more power and freedom.
I’ve watched The Rehearsal Season 1 at least 6 times. I get a high off of the idea of rehearsing life. I have daydreams about doing The Rehearsal experience— minus the camera and public humility that would follow and have it be documented for the rest of my life.
I fantasize rehearsing home life scenarios, job scenarios and even dating. I could practice and try out different versions of myself until I find a successful one to achieve my goals. But even more importantly, letting my guard down knowing it’s ‘just practice’ and that there are no real consequences. So that I could play pretend like kids do, in real life. Kinda like test driving a car.
And clearly I’m not alone as many, many, many, other people feel the same way. Especially many neurodivergent people who think this way.
So naturally, it seemed like Fiedler is creating a neurodivergent’s dream, because it is also his dream? Right?
But what if he’s not on the spectrum at all?
Would it be offensive to be playing a character (all the time) that is someone who is displays text-book spectrum traits and behavior? Or is he an accidental advocate that many people can relate to?
In the episode (5), Fielder Googles himself and finds many articles published between 2022-present day about how his show connects to autism, ‘surprised’ by how much content there was on it. “It was an odd perspective, since my show had nothing to do with autism, but as I kept Googling, I realized it was everywhere…” he says.
He continues, “…most interestingly this group appeared to take me seriously. They found this show to be a rare interpretation to way many of [the neurodivergent population] think, even though that was never my intent.”
So while Fielder comes to find that he is accidentally an advocate for the autism community, he leans into it for episode 5.
My immediate thought at this point in the episode was, ‘Oh… Does Nathan not know he’s autistic?” And maybe that’s the punchline and my way too literal brain doesn’t see the joke.
But since this episode aired (only one day prior to me writing this), so many articles have come out on this same discussion. And it seems like many of the articles are not sure either.
In the episode, while Fielder is speaking to the head of the Center for Autism & Related Disorders, he keeps repeating, “Like everyone thinks” or “But everyone thinks this way,” as if wanting to practice experiences before they happen to find the best outcome or understand how people would react before hand is something people without autism want too.
In the very next scene she has him take an autism test (the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test), and fails each slide, but keeps trying to end the test and brush it off saying, “I think I got the gist of this ‘autism stuff.’”
To include these scenes just makes me think that he is once again self aware and playing on the obvious of his character and finding humor in pretending he is not aware of how he acts, presents, and sees the world.
But it should also be noted that the some medical organization including National Library of Medicine has made it known that the RMET is not a fully accurate way to diagnose autism spectrum disorder, which would make me think in classic Fielder fashion, he’s calling out the Center’s test to potentially diagnose a neurotypical man as having autism for failing a free online test.
As someone on the spectrum myself, (but still passes as neurotypical from the RMET lololol), I loved that this topic came up at all because every episode of The Rehearsal season 1 and 2, and even watching Nathan For You and all of his other projects or real-life interviews, I can’t help but make connections to spectrum experiences to Fielder’s character.
The most surprising part of this episode was that I found this one especially endearing as Fielder repurposed his faux airport set (originally meant for pilot training) into a space where real autistic children could rehearse airport travel scenarios. This unexpectedly positioned him as a legitimate autism advocate in the eyes of the FAA, despite being better known as a comedian than a director or producer. All the while this positions himself into a more respectable position as he’s trying to convince the FAA to improve pilot training standards which is the theme of Season 2.
While Fielder’s overall life mission often aims to expose the absurdity of consumerism and the strange behaviors of everyday people—highlighting how ridiculous life can be as he tries to make sense of it all—I hope the real Nathan Fielder (not the character) is fully aware he’s on the spectrum, and that his intention is never to mock or turn the neurodivergent community into a punchline.
And maybe this is the kind of discussion he wants from people! Ugh, Nathan… keeping me on my toes.
Sincerely,
Someone On the Spectrum who Enjoys Nathan Fielder
