Nathan Fielder is a Canadian Jewish comic who has perfected an extremely difficult form of comedy—the spoof documentary that is only partially scripted. It’s awkward, it’s dry, and it’s not always clear what is real. When done right, it can be mesmerizing.
For this week’s episode of his show The Rehearsal, which airs on MAX (formerly HBO), Fielder wondered: What would happen if he took this already-combustible mix and added corporate brands and Nazis?
I have no idea what the offices of the MAX legal department were like when Fielder handed in his finished product, but I hope he delivered a nice bottle of wine along with the scripts and tapes.
The premise of The Rehearsal is simple: to practice, or to help others practice, for difficult conversations or confrontations they plan on having with people in their lives. This week’s show revisits a confrontation Fielder had with Paramount+, the network that hosted his previous show, Nathan For You.
Here’s what happened. In a Nathan For You episode in 2014, Fielder starts an apparel company to battle Holocaust denial and ends up going so far overboard with the marketing that the kiosk he designs is decked out in Nazi symbols. In 2023, Fielder discovered that Paramount had pulled the episode after the Oct. 7 attacks in a moment of corporate panic. Fielder regrets his muted objections at the time, which he blames on his own eagerness to avoid a fight with the network. So in this week’s The Rehearsal, he prepares a rehearsal for what he’d say and do if he got a second chance to challenge Paramount on its decision.
There’s an almost miraculously funny twist to the whole thing: The episode was pulled first in Germany, where the network feared airing Nazi imagery after Oct. 7. But soon, other national divisions of Paramount followed suit, until the episode became unavailable on the network’s streaming apps. (It is, however, available on MAX, which purchased the rights to air the Nathan For You back catalogue.)
The payoff is incredibly rewarding to watch. Fielder set up a fake Paramount+ Germany corporate office and hired an actor to play a German executive so he could practice sparring with the suits. The office looks like a Nazi HQ, the actor is clearly meant to mimic a cartoonish Nazi character, the Paramount logo appears on flags designed to evoke imperial grandiosity, and company employees are marching in uniform outside.
Fielder starts gaining confidence with the script: “I know you guys probably feel a lot of shame about what you did in the past, and now you’re trying to overcompensate by being the world’s leaders in fighting anti-Semitism. But when it comes to art, I think you have to know your place, and you have to let us Jews express ourselves because honestly, the way you’re approaching this whole thing, you know, people might get the wrong idea about what you actually stand for.”
But then Fielder tells the actor playing the executive to ignore Fielder’s initial directions and just speak his mind. And the actor does (though clearly this was scripted as well): “You designed this office to look like a war room. Dressed me to look like a Nazi. Pretending to want feedback. But you don’t actually want to get the Paramount+ perspective or the German perspective.”
As the lecture continues, Fielder melts back into his chair.
Paramount+ was reportedly not given a heads-up by MAX that this was coming. But it’s less of a slam dunk on Paramount than the reactions suggest.
“It’s not a good day to be Paramount,” wrote the AV Club, regarding the Fielder bit and accusations that the company has pulled punches against President Trump because it wants a merger approved. Variety, Vulture, and The Hollywood Reporter all played it similarly.
It’s undeniably true that post-Oct. 7 “sensitivity” usually resulted in the erasure of Jews from across the entertainment world. There was the British Airways decision to remove a show on British Jews from its in-flight menu; the Netflix “pause” on Israeli series; the canceling of Jewish music acts; the actors wearing pro-Intifada pins at awards ceremonies; etc.
Yet Paramount+ has long since found its footing. Mere days before the most recent episode of The Rehearsal aired, Paramount+ premiered The Children of October 7, a documentary about the child witnesses and survivors of the Hamas massacre. Paramount Global chair Shari Redstone, in addition to continuing to be a major figure in Jewish philanthropy, has been a rare Hollywood rock in the fight against anti-Semitism after Oct. 7 and has only gotten grief from industry commentators for reportedly expressing frustration with CBS’s inaccurate reporting on the conflict.
And although it was perhaps subtle, The Rehearsal’s plot arc lands at the very same place as the episode of Nathan For You that was taken off-air: Fielder has once again gotten so carried away with Nazi imagery that he has become distracted from his original, noble goal of fighting anti-Semitism. “You’re just a man with a grudge,” the actor playing a Paramount+ Germany executive tells him, and Fielder seems to cede the argument.
Fielder has been raising millions for Canadian Holocaust education and using his comedic powers for good. That he ends on such a self-aware note—even if it was missed by many viewers—was a masterstroke: He, like others, is still figuring out how to navigate the entertainment world’s maladroit handling of anti-Semitism in the wake of Oct. 7. Fielder’s great contribution to the effort is his willingness to get—and make others—uncomfortable, an absolutely necessary component of any effective effort to fight Jew-hate. That, perhaps, is the most important lesson of this whole incident.
