TV - Movies
How Real Is Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal?
By NIKKI MUNOZ
HBO's docu-comedy "The Rehearsal," created by and starring Nathan Fielder, is a hard show to explain. In each episode, the comedian meets up with an individual who is struggling with an upcoming, anxiety-inducing event in their lives; Fielder guides his client through a rehearsal of said event, using actors and reconstructed sets, to allow them to practice before attempting the real thing.
In the first episode, Fielder helps a man named Kor who is nervous to tell his friends that he lied about having a graduate degree; Fielder and his team reconstruct the bar where Kor and his friends attend trivia nights and hire an actress to play Kor's friend Tricia. After the show's debut, fans were eager to know how much of it is "real" and whether Kor and Tricia are real people or not.
In response to the comments from fans of "The Rehearsal," Tricia wrote on her blog, Cheap Chick in the City, "I am a real person (as is Kor); I am a trivia player and have been friends with Kor Skeete for years + we continue to play trivia to this day." Her blog also existed long before the show, so we know the first episode is fairly authentic, but what about the second?
The show's second episode stars Angela, a woman who is unsure if she wants kids; Fielder hires a slew of child actors to create a simulation of raising a child. Angela selects a man named Robbin to be her co-parent, but not only does Robbin tell her that he once crashed his car at 100 mph, but he also leaves her during their first night together, after their robot baby cries too much.
Robbin claims the show portrayed him too negatively, but admitted to driving under the influence and defended a comment he made about planning to sleep with Angela, even though she told him she was waiting until marriage. Robbin's brother even confirmed on Twitter that his brother's portrayal on the show is accurate — that's one more thing we know for sure about "The Rehearsal."