Evanescence’s Amy Lee Was Blown Away by Song Placement in Nathan Fielder's 'The Rehearsal'

This week’s episode of The Rehearsal was wild, even by Nathan Fielder’s standards. In an effort to get inside the mind of Sully Sullenberger — the pilot who famously landed a plane in the Hudson River after a bird strike — Fielder reenacted scenes from Sullenberger’s memoir. He went as far back as Sully’s infancy, and in one of television history’s most bizarre sequences, Fielder, completely shaved and wearing a diaper, breastfed from a massive puppet, choking on a geyser of milk shooting from the puppet’s breast. It has to be seen to be believed.

Fielder, who’s using this season to study aviation practices in an attempt to prevent plane crashes, tried to channel Sullenberger’s mindset during the emergency landing. By reading between the lines of the memoir, he speculated that — because pilots must remain emotionally composed — Sullenberger turned to music for comfort. The book makes several references to his deep attachment to music following the release of the iPod, particularly to Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life.”

Fielder ultimately theorized that during a 23-second silence captured on the black box just before the landing, Sullenberger may have found clarity by listening to “Bring Me to Life,” noting that the chorus aligns perfectly with the length of the silence. It’s an outrageous theory, but also a strangely moving meditation on the calming, even lifesaving, power of music. In Nathan Fielder’s world, it just works.

“He’s some kind of genius,” Amy Lee told Vulture, after the site caught up with her following the episode. Lee hadn’t been familiar with Fielder before this season of The Rehearsal, but she’s now completely hooked—bingeing both the current and first seasons.

“I love it so much,” she said. “I want to shout from the rooftops and tell everybody to watch it, but I feel like I have to give some serious disclaimers. Oh God, like the choking on the milk from the puppet boob? I was literally sitting there looking through my fingers.”

Lee was also touched by Fielder’s theory about her song. “It’s such a wonderful thing to imagine that something like a song can give you an outlet to be vulnerable when you don’t feel like you’re really allowed to be. I relate to that.”

She might just be this season’s biggest fan. “I feel like the path he’s going down with pilots this season feels like he’s actually trying to solve a problem,” she said. “It’s about the crashes, and about the communication, and about the social world of that community—which, as outsiders, we don’t really know anything about. It’s so fascinating to see that there’s a deficiency right there. It seems like what Fielder is trying to do would be really good for people.”

And that’s the real twist this season: yes, it’s uncomfortable and awkward and hilarious, but Fielder’s also digging into something that affects almost every profession: communication. The difference here is that the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Source: Vulture