NYT Mag: Nathan Fielder’s Ingenious Dumb Humor

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From adolescence through his early 20s, Fielder suffered from anxiety or, as he put it, the near-constant “fear of a disaster interaction.” This manifested most acutely with women. “How do you tell a girl you like her?” he asked. “Or kiss her? Or anything without her being repulsed or saying no? In a lot of social situations, I understood what was going on but tried to remove myself from it, because it was too painful to exist in.” He enjoyed performing for audiences because this allowed him to exert substantial control over an asymmetrical exchange. As a magician, he said: “You get people coming to you. ‘Can I see a trick?’ And after you do a trick well, people are interested and fascinated. It’s this thing where you hold a secret.”

Fielder gradually honed his awkwardness as a comedic weapon. “I embraced that weird part of me,” he said. “Like, right now, I don’t want there to be awkwardness between us, and I want you to be comfortable, but it takes effort for me to do that. In the show, I’ll just let uncomfortable moments happen.” He once came across a conversation about him on a message board devoted to Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, in which the participants discussed ways in which Fielder’s off-kilter comedic style tracked with symptoms of the disorder. Intrigued, Fielder researched Asperger’s and took a degree of inspiration from it. “Usually if someone gives you a social cue that he feels uncomfortable with something you’ve said, you’ll jump in with a caveat and move on. Everyone’s default state is this pleasantry state. My goal in the show is to undercut that as quickly as possible. If you really do let it sit, it’s sometimes amazing what comes out of people.”