“I’ve come to accept my outsider status,” says anthropology and comparative study of religion concentrator Nathan J. Dern ’07. Lead singer of Star Wars tribute band So Long Princess and hopeful stand-up comic, Dern has indie status on this campus. But come this January, with the premiere of the CW Television Network’s third season of “Beauty and the Geek,” it just might be the case that Dern’s outsider status is revoked for good.
Last April, while handing out flyers for his improv comedy group, the Immediate Gratification Players, Dern was approached by a scout from the realty television show who invited him to an open casting call.
“I was wearing a small red jacket and a bright yellow tie (the usual for members of IGP), and I had scruffy hair and a really long beard,” says Dern. “They must have thought I looked pretty geeky.”
Flown out to Los Angeles to live in a mansion for five weeks of luxury, Dern attests wholeheartedly that “it was an incredible experience.”
The show, though, was hardly Dern’s first taste of fame.
During its reign as Harvard’s only band dedicated to Han Solo and the crew of the Millennium Falcon, So Long Princess has acquired a modest following and is slated to represent Harvard in an upcoming battle of the bands competition in Boston.
They perform about three times a month, and their biggest single, “Stormtroopers” (“I am a stormtrooper, I’m not a robot”), has helped to propel their fame in Boston’s underground indie-rock world.
But Dern’s performamces have also brought him notoriety around Harvard, too. The Leverettite is well known around campus for having more than 300 Facebook.com groups devoted to him (with such gems as “Nate Dern Loves Primal Scream, Eight of His Toes Do Not” and “Nate Dern: Fop Leader or Reckless Cavalier?”). According to an e-mail from roommate and Crimson photography chair Joseph L. Abel ’07, Dern is unafraid to bare all, once streaking through all 13 Harvard dining halls after a dare in just a hair under an hour.
Dern’s fame—on and off campus—hasn’t quite gone to his head, though he does admit, in true reality TV star fashion, that he hopes to parlay this into a record contract or gig at a comedy club.
And who knows after that? Guess we’ll all have to tune in.
