Long before Nathan Fielder’s documentary “You Can See Everything” entranced critics and audiences with its reality-bending dissection of Silicon Valley fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, he was just another young performer trying to stand out in Toronto’s underground comedy scene.
What set him apart was his ambition to be different, say those who met Fielder after he enrolled in the 2006 class of Humber College’s one-year comedy writing program. The Vancouver native arrived with a bachelor of commerce from the University of Victoria in one hand, a camcorder in the other, and a workhorse spirit that immediately served him well.
Andrew Clark, who taught at Humber before the comedy program was dismantled earlier this year, remembers being struck by the 23-year-old’s commitment to making successful bits, rather than simply aspiring to be famous. He wasn’t just funny, Clark says, but also a great communicator with a knack for writing insightful essays about comedy.
“He always seemed very focused on doing exactly what he wanted to do creatively,” Clark told the Star. “He was clear, smart and funny.”
Since those formative days at Humber, Fielder has become one of the most distinctive voices in North American comedy, acting as special correspondent on CBC’s “This Hour Has 22 Minutes,” and hosting the satirical business show “Nathan for You” on Comedy Central. He won a Peabody Award for HBO’s high-stakes meta re-enactment series “The Rehearsal,” and his latest project, “You Can See Everything” (co-directed by Lance Oppenheim), is now in the Oscar conversation.
Clark said those skills were already being honed when he knew Fielder. He remembers often glancing out the classroom window and spotting him and a small group of classmates in the quad below, camera in hand.
“There’s Nathan and his friends making a video,” Clark said. “I was thinking, ‘Wow, these guys don’t really quit.’”
When Fielder returned to Humber in 2018 to speak to students, Clark said the comedian told the class he produced dozens of clips in his year at Humber, ranging from wry skits to musical parodies.
Extracurricular activities
Outside school, Fielder was just as active. He was a member of alternative-comedy collective Laugh Sabbath, which packed the Rivoli on Queen Street West most Thursday nights with a mix of skits, standup and video segments. The rotating crew of performers featured a few of his Humber classmates, including Graham Wagner, who became a producer on “Portlandia” and showrunner for the Prime Video series “Fallout,” and Katie Crown, who would later work as a writer and voice actor on “Bob’s Burgers.”
It was a transformative period for humour — a few years before YouTube upended the traditional way comics were discovered — and many performers were hungry to experiment. Beyond “Saturday Night Live,” there were few mainstream outlets to aim for, which meant the stakes were low, according to Darryl Dinn, an actor and comedian at the time.
“You’re just creating more for the love of it,” said Dinn. “And hopefully — maybe — if you had a group, you could become the next Kids in the Hall.”
Reliable venues were scarce, and popular troupes like the Sketchersons were forced to move their weekly shows between spaces — the now-closed Diesel Playhouse one week, the Poor Alex Theatre the next. The scene was scrappy and itinerant by necessity and it suited exactly the kind of multimedia comedy nights Fielder and his friends wanted to organize.
“You’d use the videos as little breaks throughout your show to make it more of an event,” Dinn said. “A lot of this was happening before YouTube.”
Dinn, who saw Fielder on stage during this period, says the comedian’s signature sensibility was already fully formed.
“He was always that dry self,” Dinn said. “That’s never changed.”
Non-traditional route to comedy success
In 2006, Fielder directed “Douche,” a six-minute short filmed around the Annex neighbourhood, co-starring Nick Flanagan and Wagner. It centres on two friends who are observing the world around them, qualifying which men in their orbit are douchebags. Stolid and awkward, it reads as an early blueprint for Fielder’s method.
Flanagan said he and Wagner originated “Douche” and brought Fielder on partly because of his ability to fully realize ideas.
“He’s probably the one who had the best gear,” Flanagan added.
“Douche” screened at local comedy events and eventually was posted on Super Deluxe, a comedy web platform that predated Funny or Die. Other Fielder sketches stuck out too, including “Morning Walk,” a music video featuring Fielder scatting alongside Chris Locke, a co-founder of Laugh Sabbath.
Flanagan said his generation of comedians didn’t necessarily want to take the traditional standup route, spending their lives on the road, performing at clubs or anyplace that would have them.
“They wanted to make videos … doing what we perceived as weird stuff,” he said. “Seeing a response to that made the entire thing very exciting.”
Fielder and his friends worked fast, sometimes conceiving, shooting and editing a short the same day, then bringing it to a Rivoli audience that night for an instant verdict. Fielder recalled that experience in a 2015 appearance on his former roommate Locke’s podcast “Utopia to Me?”
“You had this amazing camera,” Locke told him. “And, of course, your work ethic was amazing — your concentration and editing skills.”
Kliph Nesteroff, author of the new book “Sorry, We’re Funny: How Canada Became a Comedy Powerhouse,” said Fielder’s success also involved luck, which precipitated his move to Los Angeles.
“So much of success in show business has a little bit to do with talent, a little bit to do with hard work,” he said. “But a lot of Canadian comedy success has to do with geography.”
He said Fielder was presented with a rare opportunity when American comedian Demetri Martin discovered his work on “This Hour Has 22 Minutes” and his friend Levi MacDougall’s CTV standup special on YouTube. He hired both of them for his Comedy Central series “Important Things with Demetri Martin,” which provided them work visas.
“Of course, not everybody wants to be in the United States,” Nesteroff said. “But geography has helped Nathan Fielder ascend. If he remained in Toronto or Vancouver, he probably would have stagnated, continuing to make brilliant things, but for a cult audience.”
MacDougall, who co-founded Laugh Sabbath before going on to write for “Conan” and the 2026 Oscars, reflected on his and Fielder’s good fortune in an Instagram post shortly after “You Can See Everything” opened in theatres. He spoke of their longtime friendship and shared old photos of the two of them.
“We moved to L.A. together and swore an oath to always maintain the exact same levels of fame, success and documentary-filmmaking,” he wrote. “I finally see he was right to violate that sacred promise.”
Clark says very little about his former Humber student’s success has surprised him — least of all “You Can See Everything.”
“This film really encapsulates a lot of what he’s been doing,” Clark said. “It’s a masterwork.”
