Sumith Prasad
HBO’s comedy series ‘The Rehearsal’ centers around creator Nathan Fielder, who meets several individuals to help them do a respective action of significance. Fielder sets up rehearsals for the individuals to practice the distinct actions so that they can identify and understand the best possible way to do them. In addition, Fielder rehearses his interactions with the people he helps rehearsing to identify the best ways to communicate with them. As the show progresses, the viewers get exposed to the ambiguities revolving around the concept of reality, making one intrigued to know whether Fielder’s creation is scripted or not. Well, let us provide the answer!
Is The Rehearsal Fake or Real?
Even though HBO hasn’t revealed whether ‘The Rehearsal’ is scripted or not, the show appears to be real. “The Rehearsal” in ‘The Rehearsal’ can be interpreted as a social experiment Nathan Fielder conducted to simulate the realities of the people he met for the show. After meeting individuals who wanted to get a life-altering event or confrontation done, Fielder helped them to rehearse the same with actors representing the people involved and replicas of the locations so that they could explore the various ways to do the actions and get familiar with their outcomes.
In the first episode of the show, Fielder helped a man named Kor, who wanted to let her friend Tricia know that he had lied about having a Master’s degree. The creator created a replica of the real location, a bar in Brooklyn, where Kor planned to confess to his friend so that Kor can get familiar with Tricia’s different possible reactions. Fielder also played a part in making Kor’s reality, at the time of his confession, favorable to him without even letting him know for him to succeed in fulfilling his endeavor with the desired outcome.
The example of Kor shows us how Fielder made changes to reality so that it ended up helpful for the person he was helping. Since a scripted set of actions won’t be useful for Fielder in his social experimentation, it is safe to believe that the show is real. Fielder’s rehearsals and the results they created to display how reality itself can be a scripted event if certain actions were done right, of course, after a lot of rehearsals to explore the outcomes. The creator succeeded in turning the people associated with him into “actors” who follow the already selected method to approach the aforementioned life-altering events.
The show begins with Fielder informing us that he has been told that his “personality makes people uncomfortable.” The whole show can be seen as Fielder’s way of finding out the truth about the same. At the end of the first episode, after helping Kor to reveal the truth about his Master’s degree, Fielder rehearsed his conversation with Kor with the fake Kor (the actor who represents Kor while rehearsing) to find out how he would respond when he reveals the helps he had done without informing him. Since outcomes of Fielder’s helps and rehearsals show how beneficial his actions were, the experiments might have helped him to discover whether he does well with his fellow human beings.
If that’s the case, ‘The Rehearsal’ might have helped Fielder to explore himself through his interactions with others. If not, Fielder might have had the satisfaction of altering the realities of several individuals like a superior power. Either way, ‘The Rehearsal’ has to be real for the outcome.
Read More: Where is The Rehearsal Filmed?
