Truman Burbank (Carrey) is the unknowing star of a hugely popular 24-hour, real-life TV show. His town is a camera-rigged set, his wife and friends actors, the sky above his head a planetarium-like simulacrum. We learn the truth about Truman's strange universe a third of the way into the film, when a TV commentator (Harry Shearer) interviews Christof (Ed Harris), the show's megalomaniacal creator-director, who supervises every detail of Truman's life from a huge broadcast control room. Having been born into this, Truman is happily oblivious until he witnesses a few production gaffes and becomes obsessed with a dead-on conspiracy theory. He longs to see the world outside the idealized suburbia of Seahaven; his wanderlust is epitomized by his memories of Sylvia (Natascha McElhone), a girl he met in his years at Seahaven University, who was subsequently removed from the show's cast for trying to tell Truman the truth.