If you’re sick of feelgood TV, try The Curse

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Last week, Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder went on Jimmy Kimmel Live to promote their new Paramount+ show, The Curse. Emma Stone wore a simple black suit and cheerfully thanked Kimmel for his compliments about her performance. She told light anecdotes about all the times she had broken bones from being overexcited. Nathan Fielder wore tiny sunglasses and a dangling crucifix earring, and was expressionless through the segment.

Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder star as married couple Whitney and Asher in The Curse.Credit: Beth Garrabrant/Paramount+

He requested that Kimmel call The New York Times to correct their review of The Curse, which described Fielder as a “limited” actor, and then tried to light a cigarette on stage. “I didn’t know you were a smoker,” Kimmel says. “I didn’t know you were lame and didn’t let people smoke in here,” deadpans Fielder. The segment ends with a bemused Kimmel saying, “If you enjoyed … this, you’ll enjoy The Curse.”

If you’re familiar with Nathan Fielder, there will be nothing surprising about anything that happened in this TV spot. (There was also a promo video last week in which Fielder and Stone parodied the faux-casual banter of Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell’s promo for their upcoming romcom Anyone But You. Fiedler said on Instagram that he was “seriously concerned that the marketing team at Sony Pictures somehow saw our promotional video and copied it”.) Fielder is a comedian whose MO is leaning into the anxiety and awkwardness of a situation to reveal the artifice of … well, everything. It’s hard to imagine him earnestly promoting a show like The Curse. The Curse wants to make you uncomfortable. And it’s quite unlike anything else on television right now.

The show follows newlyweds Asher (Fielder) and Whitney (Stone) as they film a reality TV show about their attempt to “revitalise” the neighbourhood of ​​Espanola in New Mexico – essentially, by gentrifying it though buying property cheap and building “eco homes” made of reflective walls that no one in Espanola can actually afford to live in (the first episode features a scene at a shelter for people experiencing homelessness, which can’t accommodate the number of people who actually need it).

Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone in The Curse.Credit: Paramount+/Showtime

The reality show is meant to follow the long tradition of cosy home improvement shows that rely on hosts swooping in to underserved communities and being met with overwhelming gratitude. Asher and Whitney are filmed opening designer denim stores and cafes said to be staffed by locals that are actually staffed with Australian baristas. In a testimonial by some locals, the reality show producer Dougie (actor and director Benny Safdie) puts some water on an older woman’s face to make it seem like she’s weeping in thanks for Asher and Whitney’s help.

It’s probably clear by now that The Curse is not easy viewing. It’s very funny and thought-provoking, but it won’t make you feel good. That’s sort of the point. The Curse, which is produced by Fielder, Stone and Safdie, is about the hypocrisy of reality TV, of property developers, of entrepreneurs who arrive in communities they know nothing about and purport to tell less privileged people how they should be living (and sell them solutions).

The title of the show comes from a scene in which Dougie asks Asher to give money on camera to a small black girl selling soft drink in a supermarket carpark. After Dougie says he has stopped filming, Asher asks the girl for the money back. She puts a curse on him and then things all start to go very wrong for the eco entrepreneurs.

Jury Duty, like The Curse, makes audiences uncomfortable.Credit: Amazon

All of the performances in the show are something special: Fielder and Safdie are perfectly slimy and menacing, Stone is fearless and has impeccable comic timing, and Corbin Bernsen and Constance Shulman as Whitney’s equally morally compromised parents are awfully watchable.

Your willingness to hang in there for the whole season probably depends on how you feel about Nathan Fielder. (Each episode is 60 minutes, too, a difficult hang for a different reason.) His work is concerned primarily with cringe. His 2022 docu-comedy show The Rehearsal – which helps normal people rehearse difficult conversations or life events through the use of sets and actors – was described as genius by some critics and manipulative by others. The Curse has the same elements and lingers on shots or conversations that you wish would end. Fielder is fascinated with concepts of reality and authenticity; the way we conduct ourselves when we think no one is watching and the identity we construct when we know we’re being observed. Safdie too, who directed Good Time and Uncut Gems with his brother Josh, seeks out sticky moral situations that can leave you feeling a bit nauseous.

Fans of Fielder’s other work and perhaps recent squirming shows like Jury Duty will find a lot to like in The Curse. I’ll definitely keep watching – even though it feels like Fielder doesn’t want me to.

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