Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder team up as disconcerting HGTV stars in new trailer for The Curse. Co-created and written by The Rehearsal’s Fielder and Uncut Gems’ Benny Safdie, The Curse is a wacky dark comedy about an alleged curse that eats away at the relationship of two newlyweds who run a problematic new HGTV show. The Curse is set for release on Showtime on Friday, November 10.
Stone and Fielder’s characters. In the creepily-scored clip, Stone assumes a distorted radio-announcer type voice as she utters “Do you know you can put out fires with the sun?” Shot from the side, the trailer largely features a single zoom-out shot that reveals the cameras in front of the couple as the film crew requests another take.
The Curse Could Be Like The Rehearsal On Steroids, In The Best Way
Long described as genre-bending, The Curse teaser quickly establishes one level on which the series will play with its meta themes. Even in 40 seconds, the trailer rests in the discomfort of the do-over; that is, the strained relationship between Fielder and Stone’s characters is brought to the fore upon bearing witness to their unnerving retake shot. If The Curse maintains similar beats like this across its season, audiences could be in for a wild ride wherein the presence of the camera becomes an unsettling character of its own.
After his work on The Rehearsal, Fielder is the right person to take on a project of this nature. In The Rehearsal, fact and fiction is in a constant liminal space as Fielder brings seemingly unaware characters to spaces (e.g. the diner), and then recreates those scenes and sets multiple times as he lets characters “rehearse” their real-life problems. While this differs from the concept of The Curse, The Rehearsal proved that Fielder has a grand awareness of how to play with convention and experiment with amusing self-reference.
These qualities, seeded by The Rehearsal, will undoubtedly serve The Curse well. Combined with Safdie’s stylings, evidenced through films like Good Time and Uncut Gems, are marked by a well-realized freneticism, The Curse may become the result of 2023’s unexpected TV dream team. Audiences will find out soon as The Curse releases later this fall.
Source: Showtime