A few months ago my inbox pinged with an unexpected note from Nathan Fielder’s publicist asking if WIRED wanted him on a fall cover. We said yes before we even knew why. It turned out Fielder was about to unveil a project so secret that an NDA was required just to learn its title, let alone watch it. I signed, got the details, and joined the small group who saw *You Can See Everything* before it premiered in early September as a hidden entry at the Telluride Film Festival.
Anyone with a connection to the internet saw the explosion that followed Telluride. Reddit threads lit up, memes spread overnight, and journalists worldwide—WIRED included, despite my repeated instructions not to let anyone contact Fielder’s publicist—began begging for a look at the film or a meeting with the elusive creator. Fielder has become a cult figure for turning awkward moments into art. He opened the parody coffee shop Dumb Starbucks, staged an entire fake bar for a single uncomfortable conversation, and even trained as a commercial airline pilot, later flying a 737 full of passengers in what I call the Miracle over the Mojave—a peak television moment for many viewers. For a certain audience, he is a comedic deity.
Booking him was never straightforward. After the initial go‑ahead, a week slipped by, sleepless nights followed, and then the green light returned—only to become uncertain again. That push‑pull is typical when dealing with high‑profile talent, but the secrecy surrounding the film made the stakes especially high for us. I told friends I despised Fielder, then later confessed I admired him.
You might wonder why we didn’t simply drop the cover and pursue someone like Aaron Sorkin. The truth is *You Can See Everything* is an extraordinary work. Co‑directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the film opens as a strange, funny 34‑day psychological dance among Fielder, Elizabeth Holmes, and her partner Billy Evans before Holmes’s imprisonment. It then shifts into something so beguiling that it defies description. After the early‑September screening, the movie lingered in my thoughts daily, and I watched it again weeks later. When a handful of WIRED staff saw it before the cover shoot, we spent hours dissecting facial expressions, relationships, and even single lines, agreeing on little except that Fielder, known for constructing meticulous worlds, had finally stumbled into one far stranger than anything he could have imagined.
When I finally sat down with Fielder in late September, any lingering irritation evaporated. Dressed in his usual New Balance sneakers, plain men’s clothing, and a Summit Ice windbreaker, he relaxed on a sofa and answered my questions thoughtfully for nearly ninety minutes. He reminded me several times that verbal communication does not come easily to him, a trait he leverages in his work, especially when probing the truth with Holmes and Evans. The interview felt sincere; he was clearly trying his best.
Our conversation wrapped up at 2:17 p.m., after I was warned that Fielder had a Zoom meeting scheduled for 2:15 p.m. His publicist had said, “I’m trusting you,” before stepping out. I took that seriously and nudged him out the door as soon as I realized he was running late. A few days later, the odd start time nagged at me. Was the publicist lying? Had Nathan misled me? I considered confronting them, but I also recognized that people often present different versions of themselves. In the end I chose to let go of the doubt and simply trust. A later conversation with Fielder revealed that Elizabeth Holmes might feel the same way.
The interview has been edit