Nathan Fielder

Nathan Joseph Fielder was born on May 12, 1983 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and grew up in the city’s Dunbar neighbourhood. At Point Grey Secondary School he joined the improv team, whose members included Seth Rogen, whom he had known since first grade; the team placed third in a national improv competition. As a teenager he became interested in magic, working at a magic shop as a semi-professional magician and performing at kids’ birthday parties, and he later became a member of the Magic Castle, the Los Angeles magic arts institution.⁠[1]

Fielder studied entrepreneurship and marketing at the University of Victoria and earned a Bachelor of Commerce in 2005, though he was not invested in the subject. After graduating he briefly bought and sold stocks at a brokerage, but disliked the job, finding it strange to make money without creating value.⁠[1]

While at university Fielder was invited to perform magic at Vancouver’s Chutzpah festival; he insisted on doing comedy instead, a show he has called a complete failure. He then moved to Toronto to attend Humber College’s comedy program, began performing and making comedy shorts there from around 2006, and through this landed his first steady job, as a segment producer on Canadian Idol. In 2006 he won the Cream of Comedy award established by the Tim Sims Encouragement Fund.⁠[1]

From around 2007 Fielder worked on CBC’s news satire program This Hour Has 22 Minutes, where he ran “Nathan On Your Side,” a recurring segment parodying consumer reports that later became the prototype for Nathan for You. In 2008 the show earned him a Writers Guild of Canada Award nomination, and he shared a Gemini Award nomination with the show’s team; another source states that he won a Canadian Comedy Award and a Writers Guild of Canada Award for the show, so the two sources differ on whether the Writers Guild of Canada Award was a nomination or a win.⁠[1][2]

By around 2010 Fielder was writing for and directing episodes of Comedy Central’s Important Things with Demetri Martin and Jon Benjamin Has a Van, also appearing in the latter. He has also voiced characters in animated series including Rick and Morty, The Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers, and appeared in The Disaster Artist and Kroll Show.⁠[1][2]

On February 4, 2013 Comedy Central announced that its new series Nathan for You would premiere on the night of February 28 with an eight-episode first season. A docu-reality comedy, the show has Fielder use his business degree to visit real struggling small businesses and propose marketing plans that no conventional consultant would attempt; its executive producers included Fielder, Michael Koman and Dave Kneebone. The release also gave his X (then called Twitter) handle, @nathanfielder.⁠[2]

The show ran until 2017 for a total of 32 episodes, which included opening “Dumb Starbucks” in Los Angeles on the basis of parody law and, in a 2015 episode, founding the nonprofit outdoor apparel brand Summit Ice Apparel, whose profits went to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. In 2014 he was named breakout comedy star of the year at Montreal’s Just for Laughs festival and won a Canadian Comedy Award for the show; the series received four Writers Guild of America Award nominations and won in 2019.⁠[1]

After serving as an executive producer of HBO’s docu-comedy How To with John Wilson, Fielder launched the HBO original comedy The Rehearsal. HBO announced on June 17, 2022 that the six-episode series would premiere on July 15, with Fielder as executive producer, writer, director and star. The show has ordinary people “rehearse” major moments in their lives with the help of a construction crew, actors and elaborately built sets. It won the 2023 Independent Spirit Award for best new non-scripted or documentary series.⁠[3][1]

The Curse is a 10-episode series co-produced by Showtime and A24, co-created, co-written and executive produced by Benny Safdie and Fielder, with Fielder also directing; its stars include Emma Stone, Fielder and Safdie. Its first three episodes premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 12, 2023; the series launched on Paramount+Paramount+Paramount+ is a subscription streaming service expanded and rebranded from CBS All Access, offering films, series, originals, news and live sports. It launched under the new brand in March 2021 and is part of Skydance Corporation’s direct-to-consumer business.Open the full entry with SHOWTIME on November 10 and premiered on the Showtime TV channel on November 12. It follows a newlywed couple whose relationship is shaken by an alleged curse while they film a home-renovation show.⁠[4]

The six-episode second season of The Rehearsal began airing on HBO on April 20, 2025 and streaming on Max. This season Fielder turned his resources to “a problem that affects everyone”; the episodes were written by Fielder with Carrie Kemper, Adam Locke-Norton and Eric Notarnicola and directed by Fielder. The third episode, “PilotPilot.comPilot (legal name Pilot.com, Inc.) is a U.S. company founded in 2017 that provides bookkeeping, tax preparation and chief financial officer services to startups and small businesses.Open the full entry’s Code,” received 2025 Emmy nominations for writing and directing for a comedy series; both were nominations rather than wins.⁠[5][6]

On September 6, 2026 You Can See Everything, a documentary co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, premiered unannounced at the Telluride Film Festival, with audience members required to lock away their phones. Nearly three hours long, the film follows TheranosTheranosTheranos was a blood-testing company founded in 2003 by Elizabeth Holmes and based in Palo Alto, California, which offered retail testing with Walgreens and was valued at up to $9 billion before regulatory sanctions and criminal charges over alleged fraud in its technology and financial claims led to its dissolution in 2018.Open the full entry founder Elizabeth HolmesElizabeth HolmesElizabeth Holmes is an American entrepreneur, the founder and former chief executive officer of the defunct blood-testing company Theranos, who was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors, sentenced to 135 months in prison, and has been serving her sentence in Texas since May 2023.Open the full entry and her partner Billy EvansBilly EvansBilly Evans is an American entrepreneur, the chief executive officer of the diagnostics start-up Haemanthus and the partner of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who appears in the 2026 A24 documentary You Can See Everything.Open the full entry over the 34 days before Holmes entered prison in 2023, and is distributed by A24.⁠[7][8]

In the Q&A after the premiere, Fielder said that late in production his team felt Evans was trying to exert a great deal of control over the process, which led to a partial breakdown in communication between the two sides.⁠[9]

On October 16, 2026 A24 released You Can See Everything in U.S.United StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry theaters. In his review, critic Justin Chang argued that Fielder and Holmes are both “masters of manipulation.”⁠[7][10]

X: Public account: https://x.com/nathanfielder (opens in a new window)⁠[2]