You can see everythingdocumentary chronicling disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is becoming a box office hit. The film grossed $15 million in its first week of limited release and could gross as much as $25 million in its second week as it expands to thousands more theaters worldwide.
For Nathan Fielder, the 43-year-old co-director and narrator, the documentary’s success reflects a major milestone in a career that began without direction.
Growing up in Canada, Fielder was raised by two social workers, attended public school and had no cable television at home. As a teenager, he worked in a magic shop, a job that gave him his first taste of the awkward performances and carefully constructed illusions that would later feature in his comedy.
He discovered improv in high school, where he was once paired with fellow student Seth Rogan. Yet Fielder did not immediately pursue a career in comedy. He originally planned to become a dentist, thinking he could “make a lot of money,” he said. Concession land in 2014.
Instead, he earned a commerce degree from the University of Victoria in 2005 and eventually became a stockbroker. But that career didn’t last long: Fielder quit less than a year after finding the job “depressing,” according to a profile of the comedian in new York review.
Fielder then began to pursue entertainment more seriously. He enrolled in a comedy program; worked as a junior producer on the Canadian version of American Idol; and eventually became a correspondent on a Canadian television comedy show.
The latter experience helped him land a writing job at Comedy Central in the United States and set him on the path to becoming a household name.
“I kind of feel like I’m constantly finding new things, but…maybe there’s an advantage, in some way, to doing that,” Fielder said in a recent interview with The A24 podcast. “Because when you fail, you fail really hard. It’s really bad, but then you also find a new way to do things, sometimes.”
Fielder built his career on embracing discomfort
Fielder’s willingness to experiment has shaped both his wider career and his style of comedy.
In 2013, he launched Nathan for youa Comedy Central series in which he offered outlandish advice to struggling businesses, including the now-famous “Dumb Starbucks” stunt.
The series ran for four seasons and established the deadpan, gritty style that has become its signature today.
Again, in his later broadcast, The repetitionhe often puts himself in awkward social situations, blurring the line between his on-screen persona and his real-life discomfort.
“I’m going to put myself in situations that are really hard for the real me to do. And I’m going to do my best to do it, and that’s basically it,” Fielder added. “Then I don’t need to pretend, really, I’m bad at something, I just try my best.”
This approach has helped Fielder build a career spanning television and film and accumulate an estimated net worth of $5 million. The success of You can see everything should only expand on that and even put him in contention for his first Oscar nomination.
Fielder doesn’t regret taking risks. He uses them as an opportunity to learn a “whole new category of skills.”
Fielder’s career has been defined by taking risks in both his comedy and the projects he pursues. Even when a project doesn’t go as planned, he views the experience as an opportunity to learn skills that he can use for the future.
“I think I dive into a lot of situations very quickly because I’m passionate and I want to do something,” Fielder said in 2015.
“It’s a whole new thing that you’re trying to understand, and you don’t know how to deal with something, but when you experience it, you now have a whole new category of skills that you can use for the future.
“I have no regrets in my life because of this,” Fielder added. “I notice how much I change after I do something, and I say, ‘Damn. I should have done it differently.”
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