For the cover story of New York Magazine’s annual TV issue, Lila Shapiro profiles Nathan Fielder, whose uncomfortably funny series Nathan for You made audiences cringe at the people onscreen and themselves for four seasons. Known for his often hilarious, sometimes mean, always uncomfortable comedic stunts, Fielder’s new show, The Rehearsal, stages his grandest experiment yet.
“At a time when the streaming industry is going through shake-ups and much of TV is driven by trends and IP, it can be harder than ever to find the true originals,” says Gazelle Emami, culture editor. “In our annual TV issue, we wanted to spotlight some of the people and shows we felt were doing distinctive work — none more so than our cover star, Nathan Fielder, creator of HBO’s strangest new series in ages.”
Photographer Zachary Scott shot Fielder for the cover.
Elsewhere in the issue: Zak Cheney-Rice talks to Larry Wilmore about the comedian’s three-decade career and how he has kept the golden age of Black TV alive; in collaboration with The Verge, Zoë Schiffer takes a deep dive into how the Dave Chappelle uproar — and revenue crunch — disrupted Netflix’s “radically transparent” workplace culture; and Kathryn VanArendonk and Josef Adalian uncover how streamers run on data but don’t share it with the people making the shows.