Kor Skeete’s Un-Rehearsed Celebrity Life
Viral celebrity takes many shapes, but it has become especially convoluted since the début of “The Rehearsal,” the latest TV project from Nathan Fielder. A surrealist reality series with flavors of Charlie Kaufman, the show has forced critics to invoke genre names, such as “docu-comedy,” and “reality comedy.” The premise is that life could be more manageable if humans were able to rehearse every possible outcome of a given scenario before it happened. To test this theory, Fielder created a series of increasingly elaborate real-life scenarios, spinning six episodes out into a web of moral, philosophical, and logistical quandaries.
While some of the small-business owners featured in “Nathan for You,” Fielder’s first show, felt like victims of a cruel prank, most of the characters in “The Rehearsal” seem to be in on the joke—and open to milking it. They have gained a significant fan base. On a recent rainy night in Williamsburg, a middle-aged trivia enthusiast named Kor Skeete prepared for his first publicized outing since he appeared in a July episode of “The Rehearsal.” Fielder recruited Skeete to rehearse telling his trivia buddies that he lied to them about having a master’s degree, in addition to his bachelor’s.
“I was chosen over at least several hundred people,” Skeete said. “Partially because I wasn’t on social media. I wasn’t looking for fame, or acting, or connections to Nathan.” But fame had found him. He was sitting on a stool at Bagelsmith, a café near Alligator Lounge, a trivia bar that he frequents. In the wake of the show, it has become a destination for Fielder fans. That evening, Skeete was scheduled to do a “meet and greet,” before a special round of trivia questions he’d written were played. (His specialties are the Academy Awards, Presidential history, and classic TV.) “I don’t want to be haughty about it,” he said, “but I feel I’ve made it safe for people who like trivia but weren’t ready to do it publicly.”
A young woman wearing a hoodie stopped and asked for a selfie. Skeete gamely grinned for the photo. When she left, he said, “Williamsburg is one of the places I can never really be now. Tonight is the first night that I’ve been to the bar for trivia in about three months.” He’d spiffed up for the event, choosing a red zebra-print shirt, a black blazer, and dressy slacks.
Online conspiracy theorists suspect that Skeete is a professional actor who was hired to take part in an elaborate ruse. But his idiosyncrasies seem too authentic to be scripted. A self-described “shy boy from the Bronx” and an adult-education teacher, Skeete had been in a couple of game-show pilots, and had also auditioned fifty-eight times for “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” before he came into Fielder’s orbit. “Even if you get into the levels of the best testing, they still pick your name randomly at the end,” he said. “I’m hoping that maybe a game show can court me now.”
He also likes participating in paid focus groups, and one day last year he came across a listing on Craigslist seeking people who were harboring secrets. After many interviews, he learned that Fielder was involved. Months of taping ensued (he has to be vague, because he signed an N.D.A.), and he had very little sense of what Fielder’s project would look like until he watched it on HBO.
“Hours after the show aired, one of my colleagues from trivia posted the show to his Facebook wall, and within six hours I was on IMDb,” Skeete said. He didn’t go outside for four days after the show débuted, because he was so overwhelmed by his newfound notoriety. Like several other people on “The Rehearsal,” Skeete is now a regular on the Cameo app, where fans pay him to record short videos.
“Sometimes I can’t see why people are fans,” he said. “I lost my cool card because I admit I go to trivia. I guess there’s something relatable about me.”
Over at Alligator Lounge, a long line was already forming. Inside, Skeete was mobbed by admirers, and he autographed an assortment of personal items (orange-juice cartons, sneakers, and a photograph of the Burj Khalifa) and posed for photos. Someone had taken an Uber from J.F.K. after flying in from London. A couple of security guards stood by.
Outside, as the meet-and-greet hour dwindled, the line kept growing until it spanned two blocks. Fans continued to wait outside, even after the trivia game began. Skeete was forced to hand off the questions he’d prepared to someone else to read, so that he could take more selfies and sign more autographs. Later, he reflected on the surreal quality of the evening. “For a little bit of time, I felt like Elvis Presley,” he said. “From the show, people might assume I’m a little maladjusted, but when they meet me they might say, ‘He’s actually looser and funnier than I thought.’ ” ♦
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October 03, 2022 at 05:03PM
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Kor Skeete’s Un-Rehearsed Celebrity Life - The New Yorker
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