Nathan Fielder will go to outrageous and roundabout lengths to solve a problem. In his HBO docu-comedy The Rehearsal, he coaches clients through tricky scenarios by engineering the exact context in which they’re likely to happen, first erecting full-scale replicas of specific locations, hiring actors, then walking the clients through every possible outcome — budget be damned. Need to confess a lie to your trivia teammate? Here’s an exact duplicate of the Williamsburg bar where you play trivia. Undecided on motherhood? Why not move into an Oregon farmhouse with a round-the-clock rotation of baby actors?
On the series’ second season, which premiered yesterday, Fielder expands his ambitions, more McKinsey consultant than life coach. He’s set his sights on commercial-aviation crashes, diagnosing cockpit communication as a main problem. First officers might be too intimidated by their captains to speak up in a crisis, he hypothesizes. If they could practice voicing their concerns with role-playing scenarios, maybe we’d lose fewer lives. The season arrives at a funny time in the commercial-aviation industry. Thanks to the Trump administration, the Federal Aviation Administration is bleeding staff, including safety checkers, and commercial airlines are getting hammered by tariffs. (My conspiracy: What if this season is actually an elaborate PR ruse commissioned Boeing to distract from their scandals?)
To spread the word about his role-playing exercises, Fielder seeks the help of John Goglia, former National Transportation Safety Board member and seasoned talking head on airline-related matters. (By Goglia’s count, he’s completed over 100 TV appearances.) “When you’re trying to involve a serious man in your comedy series,” Fielder says at the beginning of the episode that introduces Goglia, “it’s best to take things slow.”
After the season-two premiere, I called Goglia for some more context on commercial-airline disasters and his experience of filming the show. The 80-year-old was more than happy to oblige me. “I love it when women call me,” he told me. “It doesn’t happen anymore.”
What was your exposure to Nathan and his comedy before you were contacted for The Rehearsal?
Nothing.
How did you get connected to the show?
I met somebody that was associated with Nathan in Las Vegas through a friend of mine that worked for the Federal Aviation Administration. Then I met this guy, Dave Paige, in August 2024 and he asked me a million questions about aviation accidents. I got a couple of other phone calls, then they asked me whether I’d come out to L.A. I said sure. So they called me and said, “Bring five suits.”
We filmed morning to night. The way they film it is all over the place. You’re constantly changing clothes, so it looks like a different day. I was looking for a flow to try to figure out what this was going to be all about, and I couldn’t. I assumed it was going to be a documentary about accidents.
Did you meet with Nathan before filming started?
No, on the scene, that was it.
And you hadn’t Googled Nathan by then and learned that he was a comedian.
No.
What was the process of negotiating and signing the releases?
I just showed up and they said, “We have a bunch of papers here.” I just signed them and moved on.
When I was working for the airlines, I did a lot of TV. Then I ended up at the NTSB, and that became a normal part of my job. That’s probably why I just signed those releases. I’ve been told that they like to have me because I don’t filter PC. I tell the truth.
What was your impression of Nathan and his proposal?
I like him. He’s a very personable guy. Seemed like a regular guy. He obviously did his homework because he would zero in on specific paragraphs in NTSB reports that I’d signed, even sometimes down to the sentence level. And he’d ask, “What did this mean? Why did you sign this?”
In those first ten minutes or so, I didn’t see much of a connection between accidents and what he was proposing. But he said he’d seen the problem with actors, where someone famous is playing opposite somebody who’s an up-and-comer. And he articulated it very well. Then I morphed over to realizing, based upon all my interfaces with pilots, that I had seen some of that. Maybe not as clearly as he was focusing it, but at some level.
The recent airline controversies we’ve seen on the news, like the Alaska Airlines flight where the emergency door on a Boeing 737 Max 9 flew open after takeoff, appear to have occurred because of manufacturing and quality-control issues. Then later that year, Boeing pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges for misleading the FAA. Is the deference of the first officer really that big of a problem?
The communication issue is more true than you imagine. You’ve got to understand that they don’t train pilots outside of the U.S. and Europe. Those pilots in both of those Max accidents, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 and Ethiopian Airlines 302, they and their company are responsible and Boeing less than what they got blamed for. Here we had four different pilots on two different airplanes who didn’t know how to use the trim system.
The pilot Chesley Sullenberger conducted a simulation of the Ethiopian Airlines flight and said: “Even knowing what was going to happen, I could see how crews would have run out of time and altitude before they could have solved the problems.” There were also concerns the first officer was too inexperienced to fly. Do you really think what Nathan is proposing would have actually helped?
It could have. If you understand flying, and you get the transcript of the communications in the cockpit from their accident report, it jumps right out at you. We’re not going to solve everything with one motion.
Is it true that the captain can get the first officer laid off?
In an instant.
So no matter how many rehearsals you do, if there’s a threat of being fired, you might not speak up.
That is true, but you can’t eliminate all of that.
Were there any parts of the first episode that surprised you?
The part with the pilot and his girlfriend. I think he’s onto something.
Is it possible that having trouble talking to your potential girlfriend might be different from having trouble communicating with your co-pilot on a plane?
No, I think they’re related. I was the young guy, and I wanted to fly, and I went out and soloed. And now what am I going to do for the next 1,500 hours, which equates to a whole year’s worth of work? I’m sitting alone in a cockpit for 90-plus percent of that time. You become introverted if you weren’t already. We have that with the younger generation heads down into their phones. They don’t have the social skills that maybe earlier generations had.
Do you feel like you’re a good communicator in your romantic life?
You know, I was married for a long time, so I didn’t often tell my wife everything. My wife passed away 15 years ago. I’ve had women come and go in my life, and I didn’t communicate with them about any of that stuff, either.
But you consider yourself a good communicator in the cockpit?
Well, I’m not flying anymore and I only flew small airplanes. I did communicate well, but I already had my sea legs. I had no concerns about speaking up. In fact, I maybe open my mouth too much.
At what point did you realize that The Rehearsal wasn’t going to be a documentary? Was there a moment that tipped you off?
Maybe it was a scene with the hearings.
What was your experience of filming that day?
The filming every day was the same. It was just the way I felt. And at that point I came to realize that I wasn’t having the right feelings. Just the process of filming, the words being used. I now recognize that Nathan wants your reaction. He doesn’t want you to be prepared.
What were some of the words being used?
You’re crazy. You think I remember that?
When you realized that something was off, what did you do next?
I just continued on.
You weren’t worried that he might then distort what you were saying?
I did start to get concerned about that at the very, very end, because I have had that done to me by TV reporters. If you give them long answers to questions, they can cut them up and change them and have a different outcome than what you intended.
Did you say anything, or try to push back in any way? Did you end up looking into his past work as a comedian?
No.
Why not?
Well, because I felt comfortable with him. It was all based upon my initial feelings with him, which is that he’s like a regular guy. He didn’t seem to me like one that was going to do that.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
