Nathan Fielder Parodies Paramount+ as Nazi Germany on ‘The Rehearsal’

Leave it to Nathan Fielder to take a joke all the way. On the second episode of season two of The Rehearsal, Fielder took aim at Paramount+, depicting the streamer as Nazis after it removed an episode of his previous show, Nathan For You, for “sensitivities” surrounding antisemitism.

The second season of Fielder’s HBO reality comedy series, The Rehearsal, finds the comedian hyperfixating on ways that he can help commercial airplanes avoid plane crashes by any means necessary. (Spoilers ahead.) But the HBO series takes a detour in episode two, when Fielder discovers that Paramount+ had removed an episode of Nathan For You—the mid-2010s Comedy Central docu-reality series where the comedian would concoct elaborate schemes in order to help an individual with a business problem they were facing—due to specious allegations of antisemitism.

In the 2015 episode of Nathan For You “Horseback Riding/Man Zone,” Fielder starts an apparel line called Summit Ice after discovering that Taiga, the Canadian brand that made his favorite winter jacket, had published a tribute to the Holocaust denier Doug Collins. In response, Fielder, who is Jewish, launched his own brand of winter jackets, Summit Ice, dedicated to spreading Holocaust awareness and donating all profits to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and other educational organizations. Fielder enlisted the help of a rabbi and pitched the business idea to a store owner on the show, which included showcasing their clothing behind a replica of the Auschwitz gate, swastika pennants, and a fake skeleton in an oven.

While Fielder’s Holocaust-centric winter jacket pitch flopped in the room—“Find something else to do with your life, because you are not good at this,” the store owner said—the brand became something of a cult hit for fans of the eccentric comedian. Summit Ice reportedly generated $300,000 in sales in its first eight weeks, with famous individuals like John Mayer and Jack Black spotted wearing Summit Ice jackets in the weeks after the episode aired. In episode two of The Rehearsal, Fielder estimates that, in the past decade, Summit Ice has probably generated millions of dollars toward Holocaust awareness. Summit Ice is Fielder’s “proudest achievement,” he said, using it as an example of something “silly” that “can actually have an impact in the world.”

While Fielder’s Summit Ice intentions were pure, the message of his Nathan For You stunt was apparently misinterpreted by Paramount, the parent company of Comedy Central, and its streamer Paramount+ removed the episode without informing Fielder. After reaching out to Paramount+, Fielder found out the reasoning for taking the episode down, which he described on The Rehearsal as “so shocking” that it created “a tornado of emotions began spinning in my body.”

“In late 2023, 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,’” said Fielder, reading an email he received from Paramount+ on The Rehearsal. “This act by Germany triggered the attention of other European Paramount branches, and they, in turn, pulled the episode too. Before long, the ideology of Paramount+ Germany had spread to the entire globe, eliminating all Jewish content that made them uncomfortable.” As Fielder is describing this, the screen displays a map of Europe with the Paramount+ logo spreading from Germany across all of Europe in a ripple effect—at once, a not-so-subtle parallel to the spread of fascism.

Ever attune to irony, Fielder proceeded to dedicate the last half of the episode to “rehearsing” the conversation he would have with Paramount executives about why they took “Horseback Riding/Man Zone” off the platform. But there was one problem. “I didn’t know what the Paramount+ Germany offices looked like, so I sort of had to take a guess,” said Fielder. His version of the German Paramount offices was straight out of Nazi Germany, with hired actors portraying Paramount “executives” with thick German accents, dressed in Nazi-adjacent suits, saluting each other, and taking military orders. Large banners with the Paramount+ logo draped the walls.

Fielder eventually sits down with the Fuhrer—excuse us, the pretend head of Paramount+ Germany—wearing a tan suit. They have a conversation, which was pre-written by Fielder, about why Paramount+ removed the episode due to antisemitism. “In Germany today, we have no tolerance for any images that may evoke hate or incite violence toward any group of people,” said the fake executive.

While he certainly took shots at Paramount, the often self-deprecating comedian eventually turned the lens inward. Fielder instructed the fake executive to ditch the scripted material and improvise the conversation. “You designed this office to look like a war room, dressed me to look like a Nazi, pretending to want feedback,” the actor says to Fielder. “But you don’t actually want to get the Paramount+ perspective, or the German perspective. Look at you pretending to be serious. This is not sincere. You’re just a man with a grudge using his television show to smear us instead of trying to understand us.”

According to Variety, sources indicate that Paramount+ was allegedly not made aware of this storyline. A source close to the situation says that 2015 episode in question is not streaming on Paramount+ following a standards review. For those curious, “Horseback Riding/Man Zone” is available to stream on Max, HBO’s streaming platform.

Vanity Fair reached out to Fielder for comment. Paramount+ did not respond to Vanity Fair’s request for comment.

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