Spoilers ahead for ‘The Rehearsal’ season two.
In the latest episode of The Rehearsal, show creator and star Nathan Fielder took an eyebrow-raising turn: comparing streamer Paramount+ to Nazi Germany.
Season two The Rehearsal – which airs under HBO in the US, is the latest offering from Fielder. His breakout series Nathan For You was followed up with The Rehearsal season one and The Curse, which streamed in 2023 on Paramount+, which also has the back catalogue for Nathan For You, a show that ended in 2017.
The Rehearsal sees Fielder help real people prepare for major moments in their lives by constructing entire rooms, houses and other settings in order to simulate every possible outcome.
The latest episode of The Rehearsal sees Fielder recalling an episode of Nathan For You, in which his task involved creating a winter-wear brand that would also be a statement against antisemitism.
The marketing campaign conceived by Fielder – as is in every Nathan For You episode – was led by a preposterous concept that involved blatant Nazi imagery.
The project did end up raising real dollars, in the form of millions, toward Holocaust awareness, per Variety.
However, as shown in The Rehearsal – a show that blends fiction and reality – Fielder would discover that the Nathan For You episode had been scrubbed from Paramount+. Variety reported per a source that the episode was taken down due to a “standards review.” When contacted by NME, a representative for Paramount+ confirmed as such.
Fielder would later discover that the decision was made due to “sensitivities”.
“A decision was made by Paramount+ Germany to remove the episode in their region after they became uncomfortable with what they called anything that touches on antisemitism in the aftermath of the Israel/Hamas attacks,” Fielder said in the episode, explaining that it later “triggered the attention” of other European branches of the studio.
He illustrated the ripple effect across Paramount branches with a map: “Before long, the ideology of Paramount+ Germany had spread to the entire globe, eliminating all Jewish content that made them uncomfortable.”
Fielder would also accuse Paramount+ of “erasing” Jewish people by showing search results of other shows on the platform with the keywords ‘Nazi’ and ‘Hitler’, while there are none with ‘Judaism’. The Rehearsal episode would then go on, to ambitious lengths, to compare Paramount+ to Nazi Germany rule.
The reviews for The Rehearsal have been universally positive, with the new season sitting on a 100 per cent fresh rating on the reviews aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes at time of writing.
In a A-grade review, Indiewire noted that the season had convinced them that “it’s an earnest effort to improve people’s lives”, describing it as “a sidesplitting comedy and a moving emotional odyssey for Nathan” and “a cut above the vast majority of television”.
Viewers in the UK are able to stream the show on Amazon Prime Video, where season one is also currently available.