Magician Penn Jillette has made a career out of deceiving audiences for the past half-century. As one half of the internationally renowned magic duo Penn & Teller, Jillette uses his towering physique and articulate speech as misdirection, while the real magic happens outside the audience's line of sight.
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02-04, 2025The outspoken performer has never confined himself to the realm of magic. His resume is diverse, ranging from a cameo in the film "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" to conceiving a storyline for a 2017 episode of the American TV series "Black Mirror." Later this year, he will also appear alongside Timothée Chalamet and Gwyneth Paltrow in the A24 sports drama "Marty Supreme."
Perhaps his most surprising foray outside of magic is that his boss (at least on television) was once Donald Trump. In 2012, a few years before Trump announced his first bid for the US presidency, Jillette was eliminated early in the fifth season of "Celebrity Apprentice." The following year, he returned as an All-Star and made it to the final. However, Jillette always returns to the stage with magic, the very thing that made him and Teller household names, whether through their long-running competition show "Fool Us" or as the longest-running headlining act in the history of Las Vegas live performances.
The duo is returning to Australia to celebrate their 50th anniversary of performing together. ABC Entertainment spoke to Jillette about magic mishaps, Bob Dylan, and how to find hope in dark times. The following is an edited version of the interview for clarity and conciseness. When asked if audiences today are easier to fool than 50 years ago, Jillette responded, “I don’t think people are easier or harder to fool. From a broader perspective, there’s more misinformation because of the internet. But we’re not part of that. What we deal with is done in a very honest way.” He added, “People always think technology is a big part of magic, and it was 150 years ago, but in terms of what we do, there’s nothing more recent than an electric light in our method.”
Regarding the worst magic mishap in Penn & Teller’s 50 years together, Jillette proudly said, “I’m most proud that no one, including Teller and myself, or anyone we’ve worked with, has ever been hurt. We do the most ‘dangerous’ of all magic and we follow Houdini’s rule. Houdini wouldn’t do anything more dangerous than sitting in his living room.” He also recalled, “Years ago, we were doing a performance on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and Teller’s water tank thing went wrong. We almost didn’t make it through the performance. We had a safety device that Teller could have used, but if he had, it would have ruined the whole trick. And it might have flooded Studio 8H. That was pretty bad, but we pulled it off.”
Jillette stated that over time, they have not scaled back on more extreme magic, but have become even more insane. “What we do is really hard. Teller and I have been working together for 50 years, and in the last 15 years, we’ve done the craziest stuff yet.” He explained, “Now, when we have a meeting, if one of us says, ‘I wrote a great trick, and we can do it easily,’ the other one says, ‘Don’t bother.’ If one of us says, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work, I don’t know if we can do it,’ that’s what we want. I guess it’s because we don’t have anything to lose now, right?”
As a devoted fan of Bob Dylan, Jillette shared his thoughts on the film "A Complete Unknown." He said, “A lot of my friends have pointed out the inaccuracies in the film. But, I mean, any story you tell about anything that happened in your life is a lie, because you can’t tell the story in the same amount of time.” He added, “That being said, I loved it. I cried almost from beginning to end. It was really powerful. I watched it with my 18-year-old son, who loves Timothée Chalamet. He said, ‘I don’t care about Bob Dylan, I just like the movie.’” Jillette also said, “One of the things I liked about the film was that it made it clear that Bob Dylan fell in love with smart, strong women who saw through him and left him because he was a ‘bullshit’ person.” He revealed that he had just worked with Timothée Chalamet on a film called "Marty Supreme."
When asked if he talked about Bob Dylan with Chalamet, Jillette replied, “I was playing a bad guy, and I was hitting him the whole time. So we kept our distance. We talked about Bob a little. It was funny because he said, ‘I’ve been researching Bob Dylan for five years, but you know way more than I do.’”
A few years ago, Jillette told Vulture magazine that he is a storyteller, and storytellers are liars. When asked what was the biggest lie he’s been caught in, he replied, “I don’t get caught, that’s my job.” He explained, “I keep a diary every day. Every morning I look at my diaries from 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and 1 year ago to see where I am in time. I read a lot about memory, storytelling, confession, and forensics to see how useless eyewitness testimony is. What fascinates me is that it’s very difficult to even find a definition of truth, and now people with bad intentions are exploiting that.”
When asked if he was referring to his former television boss, Jillette replied, “I don’t even like to say the word, but I know Trump, and I don’t think he lies.” He explained, “A lie is respect for the truth because it denies the truth. Bullshit is just whatever comes into your head, and it denies the whole concept of truth. He bullshits, which is much worse, he’s not trying to find out what’s true and then deny it. He just says whatever he wants. That’s much more dangerous. Once you’ve thrown away the idea that there is an acceptable truth, I think we’re done.”
Jillette also talked about watching the inauguration in Australia, saying, “I just blocked it out completely. Many of my friends just wrote to me saying, ‘Don’t come back. It’s not worth it. Don’t come back.’” He joked, “I wish I could disown my children.” He added, “Although we laugh about it, I think what I need to say is, as bad as you think it is in America, I think it’s going to get worse. Because I know Trump, and once the New York Times printed a list of the people Trump hated most. I was number seven. To give you an idea, Hillary Clinton was number eight.” When asked what he had done, Jillette joked, “This isn’t what I actually did, but it’s the funny thing to say. I said his hair looked like cotton candy made of urine.” He concluded, “Things are really bad in America, and it’s completely incomprehensible because it’s not just America, this kind of crazy dictator is spreading everywhere.”
In the face of all this, what gives him hope? Jillette replied, “People. People are good, and things always get better. If you look at it from a macro perspective, every 20 years it gets better. I mean, we just have to mention sanitation and you get the idea.” He also said, “I also think that the more power you give women, the less death and pain there is. That’s always true. And I do believe that the trend is always toward decency.”
Penn & Teller will perform their 50th anniversary show at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre from January 30 to February 7.
