Transcript: Culture chat — Nathan Fielder and ‘The Curse’

This is an audio transcript of the Life and Art from FT Weekend podcast episode: ‘Culture chat — Nathan Fielder and “The Curse”’

Lilah Raptopoulos
Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. This is our Friday chat show. I’m Lilah Raptopoulos.

Today we’re talking about The Curse, a new drama series from Benny Safdie and Nathan Fielder, which dropped on Paramount Plus today and drops tomorrow in the UK. Joining me from London is the FT’s assistant arts editor, Rebecca Watson. She is also a novelist. She wrote the novel little scratch, which was recently made into a play. Hi, Rebecca. 

Rebecca Watson
Hello. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Also with us is FT columnist and notorious resident film buff Stephen Bush. Hi, Stephen. 

Stephen Bush
Hi. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Thank you both for being here. OK. I’m gonna kick things off by introducing the show to listeners, starting with the fact that the episodes of The Curse will be releasing week by week, and we are under strict orders to only discuss the very first episode of the show this week. But it will be informed by maybe having watched a little more.

The plot, as of episode one, is basically this: Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder are a married couple who are filming a pilot for a new HGTV show in which they flip houses in a low-income town called Española in New Mexico. They’re angling it as house flipping meets philanthropy. Horribly, it’s called flipanthropy, and the goal is to, quote, ethically gentrify. Of course, this couple is wealthy and out of touch and doesn’t seem to be helping anyone at all. And cringe and discomfort ensues.

Rebecca, Stephen, before I go on, how did I do? I’m curious if I missed anything. 

Rebecca Watson
I think that was pretty good, actually. I think you smashed it. 

Stephen Bush
Yeah, it was very comprehensive. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
(Laughter) Can somebody describe The Curse itself very briefly? 

Rebecca Watson
Yes. So about halfway or a third of the way through the first episode — and that’s you already just being uncomfortable — so Usher, Nathan Fielder’s character, he offers $100 to a little girl who’s selling, like, cans of Sprite, which is all this, is all filmed, and it’s basically just content for his TV show. But as soon as they’ve got the cut, he asks for the money back or indeed snatches it back. And she, in response, looks at him, and there’s this simmering music underneath, and she goes, I curse you. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. And he asks for it back because he wanted to give her 20 bucks or something. And so he’s suggesting that he’s gonna break the 100 for a 20 and go back. 

Rebecca Watson
Yeah, exactly. You know, he’ll be generous, but, you know, 100’s a little bit too much. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. And so that’s sort of, I mean, who knows if that is truly the curse that they’re talking about, but that sort of encapsulates the type of thing that happens, the moral ambiguity. I thought we would start by talking about the show and its themes. Stephen, what did you think? 

Stephen Bush
I mean, I’d like to be invited back. So I don’t want to be this person who said, oh, thanks for having me on the show. By the way, I hated it. But I’m afraid I did. Yeah. I mean, I realise I kind of resent a lot of prestige TV because, as you said, I love films and I’m afraid I tend to — particularly when it’s just streaming and you can see the timer — start to think, oh, I could have watched two-thirds of Past Lives again by the end of it. And actually I kept comparing it to another much better Safdie brothers-produced film, Funny Pages, and thinking, you know, actually, I think across the incredibly . . . I mean, this is, the first episode is particularly . . . well actually, it’s all particularly bloated, but it’s like, OK, there is a 90-minute film somewhere within this that you could very easily make. And you know, I mean, often opening episodes are overly mannered particularly when they’re pilots, but obviously this is a prestige bit of telly with some huge names behind it. So there is, I think, no excuse for an opening episode then is quite this. And now we’re going to move at the pace of a snail and just, we’re gonna reiterate for the people in the audience who’ve perhaps been concussed that these people are a bit out of their debt. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Interesting. Rebecca, did you did you feel that way, too? What did you think? 

Rebecca Watson
I don’t think anyone feels as much. Hey. (Laughter)

Lilah Raptopoulos
No, now I’m just scared to admit that I kind of liked it. 

Rebecca Watson
Yeah. (Laughter) I . . . Well, listen, so I thought there was bagginess, but I did enjoy it. It is a kind of simmering show, isn’t it? Rather than a . . . rather than something that kind of boils up. And a lot about pace feels like about this sense of disquiet. You know, just like humming along. And there’s this feeling of trouble just ahead, this feeling of escalation just ahead. And you know, it’s a comedy designed mainly through discomfort. I mean, it’s not really a comedy. I think that’s just incorrect as a definition of the show. But like all of the comedy, any of its sense of comedy is of making you feel uncomfortable, is of making you, says of making you have to witness these irritating, imperfect, yet still trying people. But I do think it was pretty well shot. The visuals of it were really interesting. Like, it’s really designed to feel as if you’re surveying, and everything is kind of shown through like a window or through obstruction. So you always feel like you’re listening in, which I think really adds to the kind of edge of it. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I . . . It’s funny, Stephen, now that you’ve said it’s baggy, I can’t unsee all the ways in which it’s baggy, but I actually kind of liked it. I didn’t mind being in the world of how horrible these people were, like knowing they’re bad people, but really not knowing. Like, I was struggling to understand why they were the way they were, like, where it was coming from, and what my judgment of them really was. I liked that. 

Rebecca Watson
Yeah. And so much of what we witness is like them being led, like, I feel like they’re really tapping into the psyche of how easy it is to push people. So for example, there are various scenes with the producer played by Benny Safdie, and in fact the first scene is this man is being interviewed who has been helped to find a job that he only needs because his rent is higher because they’re gentrifying this neighbourhood and his sick mother is sitting next to him on the sofa and she does not look that moved by the idea of her son having been given a job, and the producer is obviously not happy with the effect. And so he just comes over and says, you know what? I think we’re gonna get some water for your eyes. We’re just gonna fix some water in your face. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
He sort of poured his water into her eyes so it looks like she’s crying of gratefulness. 

Rebecca Watson
Yeah, exactly. And you can see the couple feeling uncomfortable witnessing this and that they want to stop it, but they didn’t know how. And he tells them that, you know, it’s normal. This is protocol. This is what you do in TV shows. And it’s just that kind of insidious thing where a certain kind of person would be like, all right, well, I’ve been told otherwise, so I sit back and let it happen. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah. Stephen, I feel you quietly . . . (Laughter) 

Stephen Bush
Quietly seething, yeah. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Seething. Yeah. Tell us more.

Stephen Bush
So I think for me the thing which didn’t work is partly that you have these, other than the main characters, the fictional people they bounce off against are very thinly drawn and they are there to make some kind of point, which in addition to the fact that the point I felt was belaboured and then belaboured some more, it also grated with me specifically because not to sound, you know, like a Gen Z-er, but it feels like these characters are often sort of ciphers. It’s like, oh, you know, like, oh, so the girl who kisses him is a, spins wheel of archetype machine, a black girl who is clearly meant to be an immigrant from a non-specified African country. And oh, and this character is a, spins wheel, a person who’s been displaced, who has . . . Well, you know, it does kind of feel a bit like, a sort of like, list of a protected characteristic bingo. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. So just, so to make sure that I understand, so in The Curse they are satirising how these two wealthy white people are coming into this community and the way that wealthy white people often think about low-income communities or communities of colour, immigrants. And in order to satirise them, they’re actually just making all of the characters who are members of the community extremely flat. 

Stephen Bush
Yeah, I would say then essentially, yeah, all of the characters they come into contact with are — with maybe one exception — they’re to service the joke about these people. So, yeah. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. OK. You might, you’re making me change my opinion about this TV show.

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So I want to talk about Nathan Fielder’s other work a little bit. Of course, this whole thing is these meta series and documentaries that are meant to get you to question reality TV. His first show is called Nathan for You. Could one of you explain it in a sentence? 

Rebecca Watson
Yeah. So Nathan for You is like a prank reality TV show. So Nathan Fielder pretends that he is, like, a business consultant there to help independent businesses, like, give them some advice. And he goes in and he interviews them and then essentially gives them dreadful advice, but in such a convincing and slightly manipulative way. They essentially agree. They go along with it. And then, you know, chaos ensues. It’s really funny as well, by the way. It’s also really ethically, shall we say, curious? 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Sure. Yeah, we can say curious. Let’s explain The Rehearsal and then we can talk about why all of these things are so ethically curious. His most recent show was called The Rehearsal. It was a very weird show. It’s unclear whether it was real or fake. That’s a big question on Google. Is The Rehearsal real? Basically, it took people who were quite anxious about an upcoming conversation, like confronting a friend, and then Nathan created an exact replica of where that conversation would happen and then have them rehearse it multiple times. Do you guys have watched some of The Rehearsal at least in Nathan for You? What would you say are the through lines between those shows and The Curse? 

Stephen Bush
So I think the thing which is . . . Yeah, I mean, as listeners may have picked up on I didn’t think The Curse were good. But I think where it’s analytically fascinating is it, is, I think, having this really interesting conversation with Nathan for You and The Rehearsal and then essentially all of the things that a TV-savvy viewer can guess are happening behind the scenes in those two shows, we see satirised on screen in The Curse, right? So there’s a famous and I think very funny episode of Nathan for You where he persuades a struggling frozen yoghurt shop to make a poo-flavoured yoghurt, like, sorry, I’m five years old. (Laughter). And there’s a bit where he has a confrontation with a business consultant he brings in where you can kind of tell that the business consultant has been riled up either on the air or there’s a bit that is missing because the consultant goes from mildly annoyed to very annoyed in a way which you can kind of tell it doesn’t quite match what we see on screen, but it’s very funny and it works very well. And so then when you see, you know, the producer going, oh, well, I’ll just put water on her eyes so she looks like she’s crying. You go, oh, I wonder if maybe there is something to be said here about some of the scenes that we saw in Nathan for You or some of the kind of obviously hyper-real aspects of The Rehearsal. And so the thing which is interesting about it is that The Curse kind of doubles as a damning satire on the author’s earlier work and in the case of Rehearsal, current work. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah. 

Rebecca Watson
I think the main connection is just like obviously Nathan Fielder’s obsession with kind of, I guess, like, the malleability of people. And it’s, I think it’s really about that kind of psychology and also just generally about everything we’re scared of happening or witnessing. It’s just all the feelings of kind of societal discomfort, even just the sense of a stranger, right? Of not trusting what a stranger might say of what they might do. It’s just all of those kind of dynamics that just play out. And, you know, his main thing is just pushing, right? It’s stretching these things to the limits. And as the viewer, this becomes more and more uncomfortable and also hilarious in its kind of, you know, in his terror. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. Yeah. I felt like Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, I really had trouble watching those. Like, I just actually didn’t like it, and I turned it off a lot. And I don’t mean to sound prude about it, but there was something about it that I just felt like Nathan Fielder was making fun of these people. And Nathan for You, it was like this smart guy trying to do this meta thing, like for intellectual viewers, but actually, like, he was kind of misleading people to get them on his show and then tricking them into over-revealing. And I didn’t like that.

And in The Rehearsal it felt weird to me because he was like trying to get to some deeper humanity maybe. But he was encouraging people to be more anxious about a social situation, like almost to inhabit his anxiety. And I didn’t like that either. I felt like that didn’t help anyone. And, you know, I guess I felt in The Curse, if I was gonna have to be into Nathan Fielder and this thing that he’s doing that everyone’s all excited about, then I felt at least relieved to know that this was like a fully fiction show that I could relax and watch and I didn’t have to worry for the people in it. That said, I don’t, you know, I do feel like it did seem like he’s trying to atone for his sins in The Curse because it’s like, the show is about what it’s fair to put people through on reality TV. 

Stephen Bush
Yeah, I mean, I think . . . So yeah. This is where I, you know, I really am talking out both sides of my mouth here. But the thing which . . . you’re exactly right though about the problem with it. And then ultimately the thing about Nathan for You that to me makes it funny but also makes it from a moral perspective basically indefensible, is that people without, who are worried about money are willing to abase themselves if you push them. You know, it’s a bit like, hey, it’s entertaining watching, you know, unarmed Christians fight lions, but we don’t put that on TV anymore. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. (Laughter) Rebecca, what do you think? 

Rebecca Watson
I think it’s interesting because I have to say I am a big fan of Sacha Baron Cohen, and he is doing something very similar to Nathan Fielder. So, I mean, Sacha Baron Cohen is probably best known by his characters, i.e. Borat and Ali G. And his approach is essentially insinuating himself into situations where people will believe these character roles he’s playing in order to unveil their own prejudices and biases. But it’s done by creating pretty offensive characters that people completely believe he is. But I think the difference between that and Nathan Fielder, i.e. Nathan for You particularly, is that Baron Cohen is punching up rather than down. The people that he’s trying to kind of unveil are those in positions of power and prejudice. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. So make fun of politicians and that’s a good thing? 

Rebecca Watson
Yeah, no, exactly. And I can, I totally find Nathan for You funny. It’s just that, the kind of question of whether it should really exist. 

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Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah. There’s one more thing I really want to touch on, which is that The Curse, it sort of considers itself genre-bending. That’s how it markets itself. And we can talk about what, the ways in which it is. But really, it’s like, it’s decisively quite an uncomfortable show. And it made me think about how many other shows there have been recently that have had this similar effect, like unpleasant viewing with people who aren’t even morally ambiguous but mostly seem kind of like bad people. Like, I’m thinking about Succession and about White Lotus, and these shows are getting made and they’re obviously resonating. And I’m kind of curious about whether we’re comfortable with that. 

Rebecca Watson
Yeah, I think it definitely is something that’s more prominent at the moment. I mean, obviously like the White Lotus and Succession are two classic hit examples of that, sort of send ups of privilege, of bad intention. Yeah, it feels a bit as if drama or fiction basically is like a safe space to enjoy badness. And I don’t know. I don’t know why that is. I have theories partly to do with like culture wars and stuff and a kind of wariness of what we can say, that we put kind of things in the mouths of people who are objectively bad. And we all agree are bad, suddenly we’re kind of freer with that.  

Lilah Raptopoulos
Hmm. Yeah. 

Stephen Bush
I mean, I think, so I guess I have my own theory about, yeah, I mean, visibly, what this is, is a satire of a certain type of American progressive, right? And for a variety of reasons at the moment, lots of people who want to make that type of show feel they have to cloak it in X degrees of irony in order to get away with making it. I mean, all comedy takes place at some kind of edge, right? Like, whether it’s an edge of kind of embarrassing disease or, you know, a cut of a suit and make someone look like they’re, you know, pleased, the difference is, is that at the moment a lot of comedy is playing with that social edge, which I think is partly about the fact that as more and more of your life is spent online, you just are more surveilled. So people feel that they have to curate more what they say. This is a couple, like almost everyone, who a large part of how they are encountered by, you know, not just their friends but the people who buy their goods and services, is this public persona that they kind of have to create whether they want to or not. And I think that is the other the other thing that these comedies are playing with. Because we live in this world where you’re continually surveyed by your peers and whatnot, it means that the comedy that people are preoccupied by, I think, is necessarily a kind of comedy of manners. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Right. 

Rebecca Watson
And as I say, I mean, what we’re talking about currently, I mean, none of these are kind of directly comedies, right? They’re comedy, comic dramas. Like, I’m trying to think now of an example of a comedy, a current comedy where the show’s material was like predominately in service of like laughter, which is what like a true comedy is, right? Where the material is all rounding, is kind of lassoing the laugh, and it’s always just about to get that laughter track. And I think, I don’t know, I feel like we’re talking about much heavier things. We’re talking about shows that are simultaneously trying to set out the politics of the day or give us a kind of proper illustration of what it is to look at, like, a privileged family. Or these are kind of like big context-laden environments that you have to get the laughs out of once you’ve set up the premise quite severely. I feel quite straight at the moment, like, about TV and about the laughs, you know, like I’d really like something that’s just like, really just unabashedly hilarious, just like really going for it, really like taking the risk. And I think it is the risk that is missing. It’s a bit too much to commit to the bit, you know? 

Stephen Bush
I suspect that what’s happening in TV comedy is that the hump you have to get over in order to be made and continue to be successful is now quite high because, you know, now what is the number one comedy enjoyed by teenagers today? It’s still Friends? 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Still Friends. Yeah.

Stephen Bush
And I think that is in of itself having a kind of suffocating effect on new pure comedy. I think then, yeah, then the fact that Friends will always, well, almost certainly always be available to stream, that Malcolm in the Middle will always be available to stream, except in these pure comedies, you know, like, you know, Curb will always be available to stream, that I think also has a culturally stultifying effect in its way. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Yeah, yeah. Stephen and Rebecca, this has been so fun and eye-opening and I’ve changed a lot of my opinions in the process. (Laughter) Thank you both so much. We will be back in just a moment for a segment called More or Less.

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OK, Welcome back for More or Less, the part of the show where each of us gives one thing we want more of or less of culturally. Stephen, what do you got? 

Stephen Bush
I want more of shows and films where with the child actors, what they do instead of getting them to kind of like sit with the script and do that very [in childish voice] I’m going to enunciate painfully into the screen. If we’re gonna have another money-spinning Harry Potter reboot (laughter), couldn’t we this time, like, just get them to . . . yeah, I mean, they’ve got the money and the time to do it, like, actually get them to act as children. There are so many great examples of that. Scrapper, this brilliant new British film is one. Playground, which is this brilliant kind of horror story, basically, you know, it’s just an everyday story of a playground where a lot of it is done via improv. In both cases, what they do very well, I think, is they use the younger actors very sparingly in a way that doesn’t force them to either act in a contrived cute way or in a kind of weirdly unnatural way. And I think it’s just a brilliant way of bringing the best out of young actors. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Oh, I love that. So young actors being more like themselves. Rebecca, what about you? 

Rebecca Watson
I like that as well. And Aftersun’s a great example as well.

So this is a dangerous one because everyone participates in this trend, including my friends and family. But it’s time to say it, and this is the moment to seize. (Laughter) I want less of Birkenstocks.

Lilah Raptopoulos
What?

Rebecca Watson
I’m fed up of them. They’re ugly, they’re everywhere, and they’ve just been like copy-and-pasted on to everyone’s feet. And I don’t understand why. But yeah, I just think it’s an example of the eradication of choice. Mic drop. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Wow. Mic drop, yeah. I don’t even know how to respond. I’m gonna have to think about this and whether you’re allowed on the show again, (laughter) because what would I do without my Birkenstocks?

OK. My recommendation is to go see more local comedy. I realised the other day that this time last year I was writing a piece about comedians in New York and I was going to see comedy basically every night. And it was like, great. The people are brilliant. It’s one of the cheapest things that you can do near you that’s live, and it feels really good to laugh with a bunch of strangers. And I’m not doing it anymore. And so I bought a cheap ticket to see this comedian that I really like tonight. Her name is Rachel Kaly. She’s hilarious. And that’s my tip: more live comedy. Get out there. We should laugh more. It’s good for us. 

Rebecca Watson
I like that. That’s very nice. 

Lilah Raptopoulos
Thanks! Stephen, Rebecca, this is a total delight. Thank you both so much for coming on the show. 

Stephen Bush
Thanks for having me. 

Rebecca Watson
Thanks for having me. 

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Lilah Raptopoulos
That’s the show this week. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I really recommend you go check out the show notes. We have so much in there. We’ve got links to everything we talked about. You can see where you can read Stephen’s daily politics newsletter and Rebecca’s novel. We also have discount codes if you want a subscription to the FT, and we have ways to keep in touch with me and with the show on email, X or really Twitter, and Instagram.

I’m Lilah Raptopoulos, and here is my talented team. Katya Kumkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smyth is our producer. Our sound engineers are Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco with original music by Metaphor Music. Topher Forhecz is our executive producer and our global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Have a lovely weekend and we’ll find each other again on Monday. 

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