Nate's Crow

Based on the after-show talk from last night, Nate left early enough along in the process that Kelsey was there for the shooting of the episodes with Emily.

So no Nate. Sorry.

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I think I just read elsewhere that there were social media posts from him, working on the show, during the production period.

My navigation skills are lacking, but I’ll try to find where that was…

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Swing and a miss, buddy.

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He was definitely there for the shooting based on photos. We’ll have to see when the credits are on the episode next week, but I presume we’ll see him credited as a Crow Puppeteer, and Kelsey dubbed the speaking parts.

Photos from the Joel shoot show Kelsey operating puppets, so it’s likely she’s Joel’s Crow.

Bill said on a Reddit AMA that Joel asked him to be involved in the new season, but that he ended up declining.

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I think the only question is did they both shoot and operate Crow for Emily’s episodes? It doesn’t matter to me tbh, but it is an idle curiosity. This isn’t The Parallax View.

This seems telling. I think if it was just “Nate operated the puppet sometimes” there’d be no need to be cagey!

From this thread:
Let’s talk about Kelsey Ann Brady, with special guest: Kelsey Ann Brady!

“Wait and see…”

Yeah, it is entirely possible and/or likely he voiced and operated for the entirety of Emily’s episodes which are now redubbed. But again, it really doesn’t matter to me.

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So we’re saying he left early in the process – but then swung back by for the wrap – and his lines were re-dubbed in post for some reason?

That sounds weirder than my crackpot theory.

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In retrospect, I’m not entirely sure he’s really in that photo. And then there’s the disembodied hand to the far left.

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Isn’t that him, tucked in to the right of Crow, to the left of Jonah?

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Yes, but the lighting on him just looks a bit odd to me, as if he were composited in. Probably just my imagination.

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It is just your imagination. That is Nate in the photo, holding Crow.

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Yes, not disputing that at all.

This photo is from October. Nate was still a part of everything up until February. I saw him on the 5th at the Time Bubble Show in New York. The penultimate show.

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If they want Kelsey to play Crow in the future, then whatever, but it’s really weird and almost kinda wrong if she’s dubbing Nate. Assuming that’s all true, I think someone should tell Joel that we don’t care about continuity.

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Why is it wrong?

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Well, assuming he did the work, his work should be heard. This is all hypothetical of course, since we don’t have all the facts.

I was just thinking that if I played Crow and got dubbed over, I’d be a little salty.

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That’s also possible.

Not if there’s extenuating circumstances for this change, which there obviously are. It is obvious Nate Begle is no longer part of the show for reasons we are not privy to. As a result of whatever led to this exit, they clearly made an executive decision to dub either some or all of the Crow performances with Emily in Season 13, depending on how many of them he operated and voiced.

They’re not hiding the fact that that’s happened or that he worked on the show. Again, it’s not The Parallax View, some kind of insidious cover-up. Sure, I can agree in the abstract that it’s a pity his work won’t be heard. But there is obviously more to this IRL that’s delicate and that we clearly know nothing about, and IMO it’s not our business. And since I have little to no experience with Nate Begle’s work, I am not particularly fazed by this, and anyone who didn’t see him touring likely won’t notice the change.

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I will make this post as clear as possible to avoid any confusion. Yes, as far as we the viewers know, Nate was SUPPOSED to be the Crow for Emily’s episodes, and performed in all of them in the Philly shoot prior to going on the Time Bubble Tour. We know this because that’s how it was originally pitched to us, and because Nate was Crow in the 2021 Turkey Day bumpers which were filmed during the Philly shoot, not to mention the set photos with him on the Kickstarter.

At some point around November, Nate temporarily dropped out of the Time Bubble Tour due to having a newborn, and Kelsey filled in as Crow in that time. Nate did come back to finish the tour, and apparently also performed as Tom when Conor was out for a short period. Kelsey did Crow when Nate was Tom. One of the last tweets I saw Nate send out was him talking about how great a performer Kelsey was. Kelsey then also performed Crow on-set for the Joel episodes along with Conor as Tom Servo, again based on the set photos on the Kickstarter. It was around this time as well that Nate deleted all of his previously very active social media accounts. His LinkedIn is still up, however, and in regards to this season, he only credits himself as an additional writer.

When IGN announced the full cast in their Season 13 write-up, Nate was conspicuously missing, so some of us took to the forums to see what was up, where we learned that Nate was “no longer involved” with nothing more to add on the matter. It wasn’t clarified until yesterday that they were redubbing all of the previously shot Nate episodes with Kelsey. My guess is that it’ll help to keep continuity with the Joel episodes. There has been no further word on the part of Nate or the MST3K crew about what exactly happened to Nate, and I have admitted in the past that this intentional obfuscation and seeming apathy toward a former castmate on the part of the crew has made me and a few others a little uncomfortable.

ALL THAT BEING SAID, Kelsey is doing a phenomenal job as Crow so far in my opinion, and she deserves way more respect than she’s been getting. It may bother a lot of us that we’ll never really know what went down with Nate, and if there were any burned bridges along the way, but the fact is we should all move on and accept that the show and the character of Crow are in as safe a pair of hands as they’ve ever been.

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