When Lana Love received an email from her old performing arts school about casting for a new HBO singing competition, she jumped at the opportunity.
The New York-based singer-songwriter had previously been a contestant on “The Voice” and had an album in the chamber, so she thought the series, dubbed “Wings of Voice,” could be the perfect launchpad for her music career. The winner of the show was promised the chance to perform with a Grammy-winning artist, but Love viewed the exposure of being on an HBO series as the real prize.
Love flew from her home in New York to Los Angeles three times, on her own dime, for separate auditions and tapings of “Wings of Voice,” which was filmed on an HBO soundstage in Hollywood. She waited in line with more than a thousand aspiring singers, performed for judges and made it to the top 50.
But one day before her final taping, Love made a shocking discovery: It was all fake.
“Wings of Voice” was not a real singing competition. Instead, the show was an elaborate stunt devised by comedic mastermind Nathan Fielder, orchestrated solely for the purpose of making a tangential point in his social experiment series on HBO, “The Rehearsal.”
The comedy series helps ordinary people “rehearse” for life’s biggest moments with hyper-realistic simulations, and in Season 2, Fielder sets out to prevent aviation disasters. Fielder’s hypothesis is that the No. 1 cause for plane crashes is poor communication between pilots, so in between flight simulations and other role-playing exercises, Fielder hires real pilots to serve as judges on a fake singing show. If a co-pilot can learn how to give direct and honest feedback to an aspiring singer, maybe they can better assert themselves to a dismissive airline captain. The pilots were not aware that “Wings of Voice” was a sham, and neither were the singers, many of whom flew across state lines for their shots at stardom.
“I signed up to be a singer, not a lab rat,” Love says. Many of the contestants are just now finding out that they were essentially extras in an elaborate bit. Love says she spent $5,500 on travel, lodging and hair and makeup across her three trips to L.A. And as a vocal teacher in New York, she lost out on nearly $4,000 in canceled lessons.
In the back of a coffee shop in Greenwich Village, Love says she is breaking her nondisclosure agreement. “I’m legally not allowed to have this conversation with you right now, because I signed an NDA.” Without expanding further, Love says she is not scared of HBO retaliating against her for speaking out. “They don’t really have ground to stand on.”
Neither HBO, nor representatives for Fielder, were available for comment.
Love was first contacted about “Wings of Voice” in summer 2024. After she sent a minute-long introduction video, she was told she was “hand selected” to audition in L.A. (Love says the casting director had a pool of emails from people who had auditioned for “America’s Got Talent,” which is seemingly confirmed by a Reddit thread in the “AGT” forum in which people shared similar “Wings of Voice” correspondence and openly wondered whether they were being scammed.)
When Love arrived in Hollywood, she was presented with a non-union contract and told she would not be allowed onto the studio lot until she signed it. “We did not have time to really read the contract or send it to a lawyer or team,” Love says. She disclosed that she is a member of the actors’ guild, SAG-AFTRA, and she says producers told her that wouldn’t be a problem. The non-union contracts allowed the thousands of contestants to appear on screen without compensation, which is typical for large-scale competition series. Love didn’t mind; she was primarily concerned with holding onto the rights to her original music. So, she obtained written assurance from her production contact that she would retain ownership of all original material performed on the show. (Variety is not naming the production contact but has confirmed that they are listed in the credits of “The Rehearsal.”)
Love signed the contract and was joined by more than 1,000 other auditioners, she estimates. The production looked just like “The Voice,” or any other singing competition show. “The only abnormal thing is that we auditioned for an airline pilot,” she says. “And there were no cameras visible in the room. They were all hidden.” In the second episode of this season of “The Rehearsal,” a variety of contestants performed for a singular, uniformed pilot unknowingly practicing their confrontational skills. Those cut from the competition were then asked to rate their judge between 1 and 10 via a submission box. Love’s audition was not shown.
Courtesy of Lana Love
She made it through her first audition, so production held her in a waiting room for three to four hours and told her she would next have to perform “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” or “Yankee Doodle.” (In the show, Fielder explains that he has the contestants sing public domain songs so he can avoid paying licensing fees.)
But before she could belt out her chosen children’s lullaby, she was suddenly sent home without explanation. Love flew back to New York, and about a month later she received an email congratulating her on making it to the second round. She bought another plane ticket and headed west.
Back for the second round, Love was presented with another non-union contract on the spot. This time, it was a licensing agreement that stated artists would retain the rights to their original work. So Love performed two of her own songs, this time for producer Isha the Mad Scientist, who won a Grammy for best reggae album in 2015. Once again, she was told to return home and await further instructions.
One week later, she received those instructions: “You’ve made it to the next round, and can you come back next week?” Love bought another ticket to L.A. The night before her third taping, she was sent a SAG-AFTRA contract that appeared to contradict what Love was previously told about the rights to her original songs. The contract, reviewed by Variety, read in part: “All artistic, literary, dramatic, musical, and other materials submitted by the performer, together with the results and proceeds of their services, are considered a work made for hire, with full ownership by the producer. If any material is not considered work-for-hire, it will be assigned to the producer in perpetuity.”
Love refused to sign the contract.
“I went to the producers and said, ‘This needs to be changed, or I walk. I can’t do this unless you give me an addendum, not just for me but for every songwriter in this room,’” she says. “And they did within the hour.”
The revised contract, also reviewed by Variety, included an addendum: “For the avoidance of count, if Performer elects to perform original songs … any such original songs shall not be considered ‘Material’ owned by Producer.”
Because this was a SAG-AFTRA contract, Love was paid $1,250 for the third taping, which she says included over 10 hours of rehearsal and one day of filming. She says an additional group of contestants were fitted for costumes and told to stand on stage for hours, lip-syncing. Love says they were paid background rates of $180. (In a Season 1 episode of “The Rehearsal,” Fielder jokes about saving HBO $15,000 by hiring non-speaking extras for a party scene.)
Love wonders whether she should have been compensated for her prior tapings, writing in a note after our interview, “Cameras were rolling throughout the entire rehearsal process and in earlier rounds. It’s unclear whether this footage can be used without compensation, considering the show’s deceptive nature.” (Variety has reached out to SAG-AFTRA for comment.)
HBO
In the third round of “Wings of Voice,” contestants were split into different groups to perform a genre-medley of “Amazing Grace.” Love appears in the center of the pop-punk group, clad in an acid-washed shirt and torn-up black jeans. The segment opens the fourth episode of “The Rehearsal” before Fielder narrates over the footage, “‘Wings of Voice’ no longer had much of a purpose to me, but I had an obligation to these singers to see the competition through.”
Strangely enough, Love also felt an obligation to see it through. The day before her final taping, she put the pieces together. She started noticing cracks in the facade of “Wings of Voice,” so she Googled a few of the crew members and found one thing in common: They had each worked on Fielder’s previous projects. Love wasn’t familiar with Fielder, nor had she seen nor interacted with him on set, but she had heard his name whispered among the crew. She began reading about “The Rehearsal” and Fielder’s previous show, “Nathan for You,” realizing he was an expert at devising large-scale comedic set-pieces. Case in point: another contestant recognized the Alligator Lounge, a real bar in Brooklyn that Fielder replicated for the first season of “The Rehearsal” and then kept in the airport soundstage in Season 2.
Enraged, Love drafted a letter to the production team.
“We understand that this is a staged, fake reality TV show, and we’re aware that Nathan Fielder is the director,” it reads in part. “We didn’t sign up to be the punchline of a joke. … Had I known the true nature of this project, I wouldn’t have participated.” Love went on to write that the show “feels like false advertising.”
She began telling the other contestants the truth.
“I knew there would be no cameras in the dressing room and in the bathrooms,” Love says. “So I took people in one by one, especially the young women, and said, ‘I just want you to know this is a fake show. This is not real. This is the man behind it. There are probably hidden cameras, so watch what you say.’”
She told the fellow contestants that she wrote a letter and was planning to “shut this thing down.” One of the girls began crying and begged her not to send it. Love remembers the girl saying, “I don’t care if the show is fake, I still want to do it. It could still be my big break.”
“I thought to myself, ‘You can’t expose the show,’” Love says. “‘You can’t take away someone else’s dream. You’ll save your piece for another day.’ And that’s why we’re sitting here today.”
Many of the contestants, now knowing the show was fake, still viewed it as an opportunity to sing in front of a camera. Maybe being the butt of a joke is better than not being included in the joke at all.
But after Sunday’s episode aired, some contestants bonded in a group chat. “We were just an experiment,” wrote one with a crying emoji, adding, “All my excitement and happiness was for nothing.” Another replied, “You did earn that ticket. You did a good job. It’s just as real as it was for ‘The Voice’ [or] any of those shows.”
“I think about the kids more than anything else,” Love says. “The 16-year-olds who flew themselves out three times with their families, who did not have the money to do that.”
So, she sucked it up and sang “Amazing Grace” in the style of Fall Out Boy. Ironically, Love was then eliminated by the judges. She found humor in being cut from a competition that never existed in the first place.
Love did not send her letter, but she did confront one of the producers, who she says apologized to her and said the project was not intended to be hurtful. She didn’t hear from “Wings of Voice” until a few weeks before “The Rehearsal” debuted, when another producer called her and told her she’d be on the show. “This is part of ‘The Rehearsal.’ Did you know that?” she remembers the producer asking. Love is still receiving texts from family and friends who are just now learning the truth.
Now eight months removed from the audition process, Love describes her experience as “shocking” and “disappointing.”
“I’ve been through a lot in my time. 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 says. “I was at square one again, after 15 years professionally in this business.”
Still, she doesn’t view her time on “Wings of Voice” as a loss. She’s immensely proud of going up against HBO to protect artists’ original work. “I advocated for the rights of the artists, and we won,” she says. “That’s a big deal.”
And at the end of the day, she is technically on a singing competition airing on HBO, and she plans to capitalize on the moment despite those feelings of betrayal. “We still have to go for our dream with our full heart, even if the game is rigged,” she says.
HBO
The day “The Rehearsal” Season 2 premiered, Love released a one-minute song titled “Nathan Fielder,” with lyrics comprised solely of out-of-context comments left under one of the comedian’s old YouTube videos. The chorus goes, “Please don’t torture kids anymore. Adults are OK to torture.” Does it have a double meaning? “It might,” Love giggles.
She’s putting out a single on May 16 titled “Antidote,” which she wrote after her experience on “Wings of Voice.” “It’s about saving yourself and being the antidote in your own life,” she says. She’ll release her full album sometime in the next few months. Love has a distribution deal with Warner Music Group, but she owns all of her music. And as a board member for the United States Intellectual Property Alliance and the Copyright Alliance, she’s continuing to advocate for artists’ rights. On her website, she offers a free guide to registering, releasing and monetizing music for independent artists.
Despite being deceived and out almost $10,000, Love says she has “no resentment” toward Fielder. “I’m not sure if he’s a psychopath or a genius,” she says. “He might be showing us our flaws through him.”
Indeed, Fielder’s work, which often sets real people in the crosshairs, is difficult to criticize, as it’s knowingly manipulative and self-indulgent. To fans, Fielder is television’s greatest anthropologist, his work a thrilling exploration of our worst and weirdest impulses. To critics, his cold, unfeeling on-screen persona allows him to hide behind a shield of irony while he mines his unwitting subjects’ lives for content.
Still, Love goes back to a quote from the first-ever episode of “The Rehearsal,” in which Fielder introduces the premise of the series: “If you plan for every variable, a happy outcome doesn’t have to be left to chance.”
“People are not variables. People are people,” Love says. “Treat them as such.”