Penn & Teller on Giving Up Guns and Why Trump Is ‘The End of America’
When you tell folks you’re going to interview legendary magicians Penn & Teller, someone is liable to ask: “How are you going to do that? Does Teller even talk?”
If you have more than a passing knowledge of the pair — who have been hosting the magic game show Fool Us since 2011 — you’ll know what’s a silly question. Although, as part of their act, Teller keeps mum, in person the two are your classic goofball and straight man. Penn Jillette carries running jokes to their breaking point, in this case pledging to engage in fisticuffs with Boy George, who just so happens to also be dining at the Manhattan hotel restaurant where we’ve convened for this interview. And Teller? He’s more content to wax poetic about Harry Houdini and other magic greats than joke around; he quietly approached me after the interview to correct his previous assertion that Houdini was 5’2″. (He was 5’6″, thank you very much.)
More from Rolling Stone
Sam Bankman-Fried Wanted to Pay Trump $5 Billion Not To Run in 2024: Report
Trump Calls for NY Judge to Be Disbarred During Manhattan Court Appearance
Trump: It's Like I Wake Up in the Morning Wondering, 'Will They Arrest Me Today?'
That’s been the duo’s dynamic since the late Seventies, even before they became Vegas mainstays at the Rio, starred on their talk show Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, or launched Fool Us more than a decade back. Before the return of the show’s tenth season on Oct. 20th, Penn & Teller spoke with Rolling Stone about the first time they were fooled, the downfalls of dangerous magic, and how Penn feels about Donald Trump after appearing on Celebrity Apprentice all those years back.
You’re entering your 30th year performing at the Rio. What were some of the most memorable shows you’ve performed in Vegas?
Penn: Our first show, we were hosting a young comedian’s special from Caesar’s Palace. And then we started our own show. We were at Bally’s in the celebrity room and it was like Sinatra, Dean Martin, Liza Minnelli, George Carlin, Penn & Teller. And we have the record for the most tickets sold in that room — on a technicality. We didn’t have any friends, so there were no comps. All those people sold it out, but they had friends. And we sold every single ticket in that room.
Teller: [Now] we have the great luxury, which is, we get an idea, we say, “OK, how about everybody show up on Thursday and get on the stage?” It’s like our house. One mile from the theater, we have a construction shop that is all ours. And we have a crew of four people now who build things. So we have this incredible flexibility. It’s the perfect creative environment. And on top of all of that, nobody’s telling us what to do.
Fool Us is coming back this fall. Are you really always fooled when you say you are? Also, when was the first time you remember being fooled?
Penn: I know it’s a silly, silly little show, but we do our best to follow the rules. We don’t know the tricks ahead of time. I think other people might scour YouTube and stuff for new tricks that are coming out. But we don’t do that. They really do get the best magicians in the world. It’s pretty great. You don’t get into magic because you want to fool people, you get into magic because you want to be fooled. And then you keep chasing that first high.
I remember seeing [Teller] do “Out of This World,” a card trick. I’m from a small town. I met Teller when I was in high school. I wonder if the first live magician I saw was you. So probably the first person to fool me deeply was Teller. I’ve never thought about that before, but I think it’s true. It’s a good story, but I think it might also be true.
Teller: When I was a kid, I knew a lot about magic. The people that were performing in Philadelphia were mostly you magic clowns. But when we first got started together, we played a magician’s convention. And there was a room off to the side where the magicians did things to fool each other. And we went into this room and there was a magician called Johnny Thompson and he did a trick that sounded terrible, right? You drop an egg into a bag and it keeps vanishing and appearing. But it absolutely floored me. He ended up teaching that to us; he worked with us for 20 years.
How do you see magic growing and changing over the years?
Penn: Magic really was full of nothing but white guys, because magic was centered around these clubs, and women were not allowed. The Magic Circle in London didn’t allow women until the Nineties. A lot of magicians complain that there’s information about how to do tricks on the internet, but it’s changed everything. We work very hard with the producers to make sure that we get people who aren’t just all white guys. I believe it’s entirely the internet [that’s helped magic become more diverse] — because now you can be a girl, 14 years old, in Iowa, and you can really have access to, not all of the information — there’s a lot of stuff in Teller’s library that isn’t available other places — but enough to get you through 30 or 40 years of magic. The whole idea that magic is built on secrets is a very superficial idea.
I imagine that TikTok has been a factor as well.
Penn: My child Moxie does sleight of hand on TikTok. They’re actually doing a magic show at Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival. They’re doing a trick involving a plastic cup, which is actually one of the things we’re most famous for. It’s obviously a bit of a tearjerker for me.
What are some other memorable tricks or shows you’ve done over the years?
Teller: When we were in Chicago, one of the most ludicrous, surreal things that’s ever happened happened to us. We were doing a trick where I’m in a water tank locked in and I refuse to come out until Penn successfully finds the playing card — and I end up [pretending to] drown and die.
And in the shipping, the water tank cracked. So we discovered this on stage. I’m there in the water tank locked in. I need to be able to drown right for the joke of the trick. The water tank is now leaking water, pouring out on the stage. So I just remember this lovely series of moments where Robbie, our stage carpenter, came up with buckets of water, pouring them in to be sure that I be able to drown.
But you were safe the entire time, right? You’ve never felt in danger?
Penn: Some people believe it’s sexy, or it’s some weird misplaced kind of macho thing to do dangerous shit. I find that you make the audience complicit in an immoral act by buying a ticket when you’re doing something dangerous. And when you get a dipshit who takes a chance of actually hurting himself? First of all, it’s incompetent. So we did the Bullet Catch, which is considered the most dangerous trick in show business. And everybody wanted us to advertise it as the most dangerous trick. And we refused to do that. Because we did it in a way that we believe was completely safe. We did it for years and years. And we can’t do it now. We don’t want to do it now. Because guns have become a different thing in this country.
David Blaine is a friend of ours — and I don’t think we’re misrepresenting him at all — but I won’t see his show because I’m not going to be there the night he gets hurt. Lately, he dislocated his shoulder, which will never get better. He’s injured his esophagus and his stomach, he’s fucked up his hand. But his sensibility is that his job is to skew people’s view of reality. He would like you not to know whether something was a trick. Did he really hold his breath? Did he really swallow frogs? Or was that a trick? That ambiguity is outside of my morality.
If I’m going to do magic for you, I should not use it to distort your view of reality. And we are motherfucking good enough. Even with you knowing it’s a trick, you’re still blown away. You can’t be completely safe. Obviously, a light could fall on us now. Boy George could go rabid and beat us senseless, right? What are the chances Boy George goes crazy and kills us? I would say it’s not zero. Ten percent?
Penn, I’m curious what you think of the political landscape these days, since you came out in support of Joe Biden previously for president after appearing on Celebrity Apprentice. With all these Trump indictments, how do you feel about that now?
Penn: That ties in directly with [what I was saying about danger]. Many people would scoff at us and say it’s harmless for people to have their own view of reality. And if we’ve learned anything in the past ten years, it’s [that] it’s not harmless. And I can’t take the blame because to take the blame is self-aggrandizing, but I did two tours of duty on Celebrity Apprentice and I referred to someone who I knew was a dipshit, who I knew was a loser and a liar, as “Mr. Trump.” And I didn’t laugh out loud when they said he was a billionaire. And I didn’t laugh out loud when they said he was a good businessman.
I knew he was a terrible businessman. I knew he wasn’t really rich. I knew he was a liar. I knew all of that. And I sat there in a suit. What harm does it do to be on a TV show? To pretend that someone is a successful businessman? Turns out it matters a lot. I think of all the arguments I’ve had over all the years with everybody, including journalists, and saying, “Well, that doesn’t matter. You know, you’re saying this guy who’s pretending to read minds can’t really read minds? What difference does it make? If someone believes that they enjoy it? It’s fun?” Well, it turns out it makes a lot of difference because it is the end of the United States of America.
Best of Rolling Stone
