It is impossible to pigeonhole Nathan Fielder into a single box. He is an actor, writer, director, producer, and an accredited private pilot. He is also, arguably, a changer of culture, thanks to the countless schemes he has brought to life through projects like Nathan for You and The Rehearsal. Now, a potential new role has been thrown out that isn’t going to leave my head anytime soon: Dancing With the Stars contestant.
In a recent TikTok video, Dancing With the Stars pro Emma Slater named Fielder as her dream celebrity partner for the show. She admits to being a massive fan of his work, calling him a “genius” and “a national treasure.”
“I’d say he possibly can’t [dance] — sorry Nathan if you’re watching, maybe you can — but if I was to take a wild guess I would say that he wasn’t the most natural dancer,” Slater explains, “but we would have the best time and I’m obsessed with him.”
Even just praising Fielder would have been enough to earn Slater kudos, but she proceeds to make a pretty convincing argument for why he would be great to see on the show. She argues that Fielder could blend the reality of Dancing With the Stars with his work on The Rehearsal, his HBO show where he creates elaborate (and often expensive) scenarios to rehearse social situations, which could result in something truly meta and unexpected.
“The biggest, hilarious moment in American history could be that Nathan fabricates this entire dancing competition which is a mock rehearsal for the real thing, or it could be that Dancing with the Stars is a mock rehearsal for something that he’s doing,” Slater argues. “There’s a way that this could be the rehearsal for the real thing and that would be the biggest joke in the world and I would be here for it.”
Dance city over here!
Whether or not Fielder can already dance is up for debate, with the biggest piece of evidence being a fifteen-year-old YouTube video, simply titled “dance”, where he busts a move to Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie.” But part of the fun of Dancing With the Stars is seeing contestants improve over time, which Slater knows firsthand given the growth that her last dance partner, Andy Richter, had over the show’s most recent season.
And to Slater’s point, Fielder would most likely take the task of Dancing With the Stars extremely seriously. Keep in mind, this is the man who, while trying to improve aviation safety in The Rehearsal Season 2, kayfabed the entire life of hero pilot Chester “Sully” Sullenberger, and spent several years secretly getting a pilot license. That season also established precedent for The Rehearsal creating elaborate singing competitions, as Fielder launched the aviation-themed American Idol pastiche Wings of Voice in order to gauge how good pilots are at being honest with strangers.
People have already wondered (and worried) about what a third season of The Rehearsal could entail. Have Fielder’s media tour and awards snubs for Season 2 been a part of it? Does his recent account on the celebrity-centric dating app Raya have anything to do it? Once you maybe fold Dancing With the Stars into that, the possibilities would truly be endless.
Not just because Fielder’s gauge of current pop culture includes referring to TikTok as “a children’s dancing app.” Not just because the whole thing could result in another elaborate bit, which might not even reveal itself until The Rehearsal Season 3 rolls around several years later. But because I would love to see him earnestly commit to that bit. The world deserves to see Nathan Fielder ballroom dancing to a slowed-down rendition of a random Top 40 hit.
(featured image: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for HBO)
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