The trailer for Nathan Fielder’s The Curse is really screwing with us

I don’t know what we’re getting into here

• By
  
  Joshua Rivera
  
• on September 27, 2023 1:54 pm

You can’t trust Nathan Fielder. That was the basic premise of Nathan For You, his seminal Comedy Central series about reinventing local businesses in absurd, nonsensical ways that pushed the limits of reality television. He took things further in The Rehearsal, an HBO docu-series where Fielder would help people “rehearse” in preparation for difficult moments in their lives, to an uncomfortably mind-bending degree.

His new series, co-created with Benny Safdie, Showtime’s The Curse, bills itself as “a genre-bending series that explores how an alleged curse disturbs the relationship of a newly married couple as they try to conceive a child while co-starring in their new home-improvement show.”

But as we said, you can’t trust Fielder, and the first trailer for The Curse features Fielder and Emma Stone playing the show’s central couple as they shoot an intro for their show while discordant, unsettling music plays. The only thing the trailer reveals is the camera crew shooting the couple, which immediately signals an interest in layers of reality and performance and authenticity that Fielder’s previous work has explored — just, you know. Spookier.

The Curse premieres on Nov. 10.

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