On HBO comedy docuseries The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder helps people prepare for real life challenges: a confession to a friend, a contested will, the decision to become a parent (or not). Big stuff! It’s not quite a Queer Eye or Tidying Up self-help approach, though. Instead of inspiring people with motivational words or a life-changing makeover, Fielder creates an elaborate scenario — the titular rehearsal — that helps each participant practice their life event with actors, sets, and countless details designed to simulate the real thing. So when it actually happens, they’re ready! As ready as you ever can be, anyway.
After watching the comedian play earnest make-believe in people’s personal lives on The Rehearsal — and, of course, Nathan for You, which ran from 2013 to 2017 — you may be wondering: what about his personal life? Is Fielder dating anyone?
Fielder is a pretty private person, but he has discussed his relationships on occasion. In a 2017 Rolling Stone interview, he revealed that he was “dating someone,” after his 2014 divorce — which he alludes to on The Rehearsal. Fielder was previously married to a children’s librarian he met in Canada. “Any breakup is hard,” he told the magazine. “It was tough.” As for who he was dating in 2017, Fielder said he was “not going to talk more about it.”
Five years later, Fielder opened up about his marriage and current relationship status in a July interview with New York Magazine — sharing that he met his ex at a comedy show, and the pair got married in 2011. During production on Nathan for You Season 2, they divorced. “I was like, Wow, I’m so bad at life,” he told the magazine. He also revealed that he’s currently living with someone and is “really happy.”
That Fielder was married during the early days of Nathan for You might be surprising to viewers, since his on-screen persona seemed to be rather single. In the very first episode, he commiserates with a pizza delivery employee about how “nice guys finish last,” for example — and in the infamous Bachelor spoof episode, “The Hunk,” Fielder says he’s “immature and underdeveloped” re: dating. “Every girl I liked growing up rejected me,” he says. “And because of that, I’ve grown into a man who is chronically nervous around women.”
On that series, Fielder told The A.V. Club, he didn’t “delve a lot into [his] life outside of the show,” so it makes sense that his IRL marriage wouldn’t come up during filming. “There’s some of me in there,” Fielder said of his Nathan for You persona, “but I’m also exaggerating parts of myself … [and] taking a lot of vulnerabilities and insecurities that I had when I was younger, and I’m exaggerating them for the sake of comedy.”
Obviously, things are a little different on The Rehearsal. While Fielder is still reticent to open up, he does acknowledge his actual relationship history. “I was married for three years,” he tells Kor Skeete in a swimming pool. “Is it sad for you?” Sure, he arranged for a fellow swimmer to interrupt the conversation before things got “too deep.” But still!
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