Nathan Fielder Conspiracy Theorists Suspect That Paramount Was Behind Recent ‘Hit Piece’
Despite the fact that Season One potentially traumatized a small child, the second season of The Rehearsal has somehow proven to be far more controversial, all thanks to an aviation-themed parody of Canadian Idol.
As we’ve already mentioned, Variety recently published an interview with one of the aggrieved former contestants of Wings of Voice, Nathan Fielder’s reality singing competition that was only as real as Nate’s Lizard Lounge and The Diarrhea Times.
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While presented as a damning criticism of The Rehearsal, Fielder fans were quick to point out that much about the story didn’t make a whole lot of sense. For one thing, the article noted that the musician in question, Lana Love, has a record deal with Warner Music Group, which makes it seem odd that she’d personally spend more than $5,000 in order to sing conspicuously royalty-free songs to a of stoic airline pilots.
Others noticed that Love had shared one of HBO’s promotional posts for The Rehearsal. Which, again, is weird, considering that she would later blast the producers for treating her like a “lab rat.”
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While the headline claims that she felt “betrayed,” that word doesn’t actually appear in any of Love’s quotes. She also clarified that she has “no resentment” toward Fielder, and seemed to completely understand the nature of the show. “I’m not sure if he’s a psychopath or a genius,” she told Variety. “He might be showing us our flaws through him.”
Fielder isn’t really a psychopath, and when he’s not playing “Nathan Fielder,” he seems like a pretty normal dude that doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. A 2017 Rolling Stone profile pointed out that on Nathan for You, Fielder “never sets out to humiliate anyone but himself.” And Fielder told the magazine that “if we can give people a unique experience that’s different from their regular lives and it’s also entertaining for America, that’s a dream scenario.”
This isn’t to say that he couldn’t have genuinely upset people, including some Wings of Voice contestants. But Love’s bad experience certainly doesn’t seem to be the consensus amongst contestants, leading some fans to theorize that the negative coverage was really the handiwork of the insidious force known as Paramount.
Fielder recently made headlines for comparing the studio to Nazi in an episode of The Rehearsal, after he discovered that Paramount+ removed an episode of Nathan for You about windbreakers/Holocaust awareness due to “sensitivities.” So is it possible that the studio pressured the trade publication to release a “hit piece” about Fielder? These people certainly think so…
On Reddit, fans similarly suggested that Paramount could be behind the article. “Hmmmm a Variety hit-piece a week after Nathan compared Paramount to the Nazi regime… Interesting,” one person wrote.
“Paramount paid for this huh,” another added.
Although there’s no actual proof of this, Variety has had some genuinely questionable coverage lately.
