Auditioners for ‘The Rehearsal’s Fake Singing Competition Show Say the Experience Was ‘Super Sketchy’

Most of the buzz around the latest installment of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal involved the star’s beef with Paramount+ over their decision to pull an episode of Nathan for You due to cultural “sensitivities.” Oddly, the episode in question was the one about Holocaust awareness, and not the one featuring a robot arm that nearly turned Fielder into a “ed sex offender.”

But the bulk of this week’s show was actually about Fielder’s fake TV singing competition Wings of Voice, which was created to help airline co-pilots train to become more assertive, while also seemingly helping Fielder overcome the psychic trauma of working as a junior producer for Canadian Idol 20 years ago.

If there was any doubt about whether or not the aspiring vocalists who showed up to audition for Wings of Voice were real, Fielder fans uncovered an old post on the America’s Got Talent subreddit in which real contestants expressed concern about the extremely suspicious contest.

Apparently, former applicants to AGT were ed by someone inviting them to an “HBO Talent Showcase.” “Did they just accept everyone or did they actually select people?” the original poster wrote nine months ago. “Because if they just accepted everyone it might be a scam.”

Even those who decided to roll the dice and enter noticed some major red flags, including Fielder’s requirement that contestants had to perform public domain material. “The song choices (are very) strange. ‘Oh Susanna’ is a racist song,” one person pointed out. 

“Just to update you guys I got there and it was super weird and sketchy,” a contestant warned. “They have you in a parking garage, then walk you over eventually into the studio, which is just another big empty room. The song choices were super weird. I sang ‘House of the Rising Sun.’ … I was surprised because it was one dude who literally looked like he was an airline pilot and he gave no and ed on me immediately when I was done. Unless you have a Mariah Carey voice, there’s no reason to waste your time.”

Clearly these highly-suspicious singers weren’t as gullible as the show might have made it seem. One friend of a contestant shared that “EVERYONE who was there including herself was thinking it seemed sketchy and they all kept asking if this was legit or if it was a prank show.”

While the fake singing competition may have been a tad mean, The Rehearsal might still end up launching at least one singing career. At the end of episode, Fielder offers encouragement to a 15-year-old aspiring performer named Sophia. It would be a truly heartwarming scene in literally any other show.

Well, now Sophia has a YouTube page, and is using her newfound Rehearsal fame to help promote her music. 

If she plays her cards right, she could be more successful than any of the Canadian Idol winners.