Nathan Fielder's fake Canadian Idol contestant "didn’t sign up to be the punchline of a joke"

Lana Love says she spent over $5,500 traveling to and from "auditions" for The Rehearsal's "Wings Of Voice."

By Emma Keates | May 12, 2025 | 2:18pm

Photo: John P. Johnson/HBO

TV News Nathan Fielder

Nathan Fielder's fake Canadian Idol contestant

Watching this increasingly deranged season of The Rehearsal (or really any Nathan Fielder show), it’s hard not to wonder what the very real people at the center of the joke think of their (often unwitting) participation. Last month, we got that answer from a major corporation, and now, we have it from an individual. The answer? It doesn’t feel awesome!

For the first few rounds of auditions, singer-songwriter Lana Love fully thought “Wings Of Voice,” which first appeared in the second episode of this season of The Rehearsal, was a real show. She was “hand-selected” to audition from a pool of people who had also tried out for America’s Got Talent with the promise that the winner would get to perform with a Grammy-winning artist, she said in an NDA-breaking interview with Variety. Sure, the fact that she was auditioning for an airline pilot set off some minor alarm bells, but otherwise the process apparently looked just like any other singing competition.

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In reality, “Wings Of Voice” was an incredibly elaborate side-note to Fielder’s larger thesis this season: that airline safety can be improved by increasing communication between pilots. Love’s audition was never shown—that 35-minute episode somehow also had to find time for Fielder to compare Paramount+ to Nazi Germany—but she still shelled out thousands for it. The New York-based artist said she spent $5,500 on travel to L.A., lodging, hair, and makeup, in addition to nearly $4,000 in canceled voice lessons, for three rounds of auditions (one of which, the group stage, was shown in the opening of last night’s episode).

That was before Love started putting the pieces together and realized that every “Wings Of Voice” crew member she interacted with had worked on a past Fielder project. The realization inspired her to draft a letter to producers claiming that contestants “didn’t sign up to be the punchline of a joke” and start spreading the word among fellow singers in an attempt to “shut this thing down.” In the end, she decided to save her piece for later in order not to “take away someone else’s dream” who would have been happy with the exposure regardless of the means.

Now, everyone knows. “I signed up to be a singer, not a lab rat,” Love told Variety, sharing that her newfound friends expressed similar sentiments in a group chat upon learning the truth. “I put in my 10,000 hours, and I felt like there wasn’t a basic human respect for people who have devoted their lives to art,” she continued. “I was at square one again, after 15 years professionally in this business.”

While the experience may not have made her a star, it did give her new inspiration. The day The Rehearsal aired, Love released a song titled “Nathan Fielder” consisting entirely of comments left under his old YouTube videos. She’s also releasing a single called “Antidote” on May 16 which she says was inspired by her experience.

While Love says she has “no resentment” toward Fielder, she’s “not sure if he’s a psychopath or a genius… He might be showing us our flaws through him.” She may not have her golden ticket, but at least she can always say she brushed up against one of the closest things we have to a real life Willy Wonka. You can read more about Love’s Rehearsal experience at Variety.