A Video Guide to Nathan Fielder’s Pre-Comedy Central Years

For fans of Nathan Fielder’s new Comedy Central show, Nathan For You, or his hilarious Twitter experiments, it may seem like the comedian came out of nowhere this past year, but Fielder’s recent success is a result of cultivating his comedic voice via YouTube videos, which led him to TV work on Canada’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes and previous Comedy Central shows Important Things with Demetri Martin and Jon Benjamin Has a Van. Nathan Fielder began making his own short films as a 23-year-old living in Toronto in 2006, and his YouTube channel, which features over 30 original videos (short films, web series, and muic videos), is still up and a great place to see his dry sense of humor in a nascent state. We dug through Fielder’s YouTube archive and picked out the best stuff, all of it organized in the videolist below, including three music videos from his alternative jazz pop duo “Side of Smooth.�

Short films (2006-2010):

“Game�

“Once a Year�

“Job Hunt�

“Widget�

“Demo Reel�

“Even the Best�

“Blow Out�

“Scenarios�

“Courage� (listed as Fielder’s final project in film school)

“watch this�

“Trailer�

“Top Chef - Season 4 Ep 7 (part 3 of 4)�

“Ronald Shoub�

Music videos (2008-2009):

Fielder and fellow Toronto comedian/writer Chris Locke made two music videos as an alternative jazz pop duo called Side of Smooth.

“Morning Walk�

“Chow Down�

“Danielle and Anika�

This Hour Has 22 Minutes (2007-2009):

Fielder’s first TV job was on a Canadian fake news show called This Hour Has 22 Minutes, where he served as a special correspondent for two years. Fielder hosted the regular feature Nathan On Your Side, which saw him acting as an investigate reporter. It was pretty much a trial run for Nathan For You. While some of Fielder’s 22 Minutes segments are embedded below, there are a lot more on YouTube that aren’t embeddable for some reason.

“Tall Club�

“Nathan on Your Side - “mp3 Player�

“Nathan’s Nook 1�

“Who’s Tallest? Canada�