As of August 19, 2025, magicians Penn Jillette and Teller have been in show business for 50 years. For reasons that will soon be evident, I haven’t room for a “the story so far” retrospective of their career, so if you want something like that, I recommend seeking out one of the several excellent articles written about that milestone last year. (Jason Zinoman did a great one for the New York Times.) We’re picking up the story after the books, the TV specials, the Saturday Night Live appearances, the feature film (1989’s Penn & Teller Get Killed, which lives up to its name), the national tours and so on. We’re jumping in at the start of their residency at the Rio, January 5, 2001.
It wasn’t their first Vegas show—they’d appeared here, on and off, through the 1990s—but even so, it was immediately clear this was a big deal. Here were two chaos agents who not only eschewed the cliches of stage magic—didn’t wear spangly costumes, didn’t saw women in half and sometimes explained their tricks while they were doing them—but openly mocked those tropes, at a time when those cliches still reigned on the Strip. Either Vegas would change Penn & Teller, or they would change Vegas—and now, in their 25th year at the Rio, it seems obvious that the former was never a possibility at all.
Now, in keeping with Penn & Teller’s proclivity for showing you how certain tricks are done, I’m gonna give myself away: I spoke to them separately and by phone, and I’ve rephrased some of my questions so it sounds like they were in the same room. They were both cool and very erudite, and I’m gonna get the hell out of their way and allow them to hijack the next few pages. The interviewer makes himself disappear. You’re now in Penn & Teller’s Weekly. Enjoy.
When you started performing at the Rio, did you expect that you’d still be here 25 years on?
Teller: No. I didn’t have any expectations one way or the other. We played several different places; we started at Bally’s. We were brought out here, very interestingly, by Joel Fischman, who died a couple of years ago. He was a brilliant, brilliant promoter who was the entertainment director at Bally’s, and he had come to see our show off-Broadway. But no, we didn’t expect to be here forever.
Penn: I never expected to be here at all, without the “still.” You know, we are, I think, a little unusual in show business, in that if you ask Madonna or Paul McCartney or Taylor Swift or Howard Stern or Sabrina Carpenter about their success, they will tell you they should be more successful than they are. … That’s a personality type. Of course, Houdini would have been that way, too. But Teller and I were completely happy with our success. When we were carny trash, we were perfectly happy doing 200-seat theaters and working carnivals and working Renaissance festivals and streets. … An old girlfriend of mine was asked if, as Teller and I got more successful, we’d changed. And she said no, and “not because they stayed humble, but because they always thought their show was the most important thing in the world, even when only 40 people were there.” We’d accomplished our goals.
But our good friend Joel Fischman said, “You guys will do great [in Atlantic City and Las Vegas]. And we said, “No, we won’t. We do a smart show; we can’t play for those philistines.” That’s how closed-minded and stupid we were. And he made a deal with us. He said, “You come to Atlantic City; you do your hardest, most complicated stuff; you do it for three days, and if you don’t like it, I’ll replace you and pay you for the whole week.” And we went to Atlantic City and had the realization that the whole world should have, that the people are the same. The people we were playing for in Atlantic City were not like the people in New York. They were the same people from New York; they were driving down.
And LA people drive up to Vegas. What was the city like for you, when you came to Bally’s in 1993?
Penn: Joel booked us in the Celebrity Room, which is where Sinatra and Dean Martin performed. I mean, our first time playing Vegas, the other acts in town were Willie Nelson, George Carlin, Liza Minnelli, Tom Jones. … And we thought, “Wow, we don’t belong here.” But I’m going to make a claim you won’t believe, and then we’re going to explain the weasel position that allows me to say it: We sold more tickets in the Celebrity Room at Bally’s than any other performer ever.
Now, what does that mean? Sinatra never sold out, Dean Martin never sold out? And the answer is, “correct.” They always had friends [attending]. Teller and I had no friends, and no high rollers wanted to see us. There were no comps from us and no comps from the hotel. It’s the only time they’ve ever had an act in there that had no comps from anybody. We’re the only ones to have sold every seat.
Forgive me if it’s cheesy and immodest, but we ushered in a change in the way people saw Vegas. Up until the early ’90s, people went to Vegas ironically. You did not go for good food; you did not go for a good show. You went to do things you didn’t do. You saw a sh**ty impressionist show or an Elvis impersonator, and you ate at a sh**ty steakhouse—you know, 50 cents extra for Roquefort dressing, leather banquettes. And then you drank in ways that you didn’t normally drink. You went with your buddies, and you laughed at Vegas. And then when we came in, and we convinced the Blue Man Group to come in, and then Cirque started changing their vibe. … Now, many people come to Las Vegas unironically, and the shows that were supported by people coming ironically have gone away. And the restaurants that were supported by—I can say this nutty sentence—ironic eating have also gone away. You can either say we were the start of it, or you can say we were coincidental. Probably the latter is true, but it was nice.
What do you like about performing here?
Teller: Vegas is kind of a wonderful place to do show business if you have the right context and the right people that you’re working with. If you’re in New York, the chances are your producers are going to try to have some artistic input into your show. And if you’re in New York, the chances are that you will be oppressed by their long-standing union problems. If you’re here, people kind of leave you alone. You know, if people show up to see the show, well, great; if we want to go in and work on new material in the afternoon, well, great. They don’t care. In my youth, I wouldn’t think the idea that people don’t care would be a good thing. I think it’s now a great thing. I love people not caring.
Have the Vegas audiences changed over 25 years?
Penn: When we go play Chicago, we’ve been sold out for four months, yeah, and the people in the front row have been waiting for our show for six months. …So, by the time we hit the stage, people go out of their f**king minds. And people know who we are, what we’re doing. People in Vegas, as you know, buy tickets the day of the show. And in many cases, it’s like, do you want to f**k or do you want to see Penn & Teller? People make the wrong choice; they come to see us.
I love the fact that every night we get to prove ourselves. That’s making it too competitive; I don’t mean it really that way, but every night you’ve got tabula rasa [a blank slate]. People get to find out what we do, instead of coming fully loaded. ... But Vegas audiences are changing in that two things are happening simultaneously: America is becoming more divided than it’s ever been since the Civil War, and at the same time, it’s becoming more homogeneous. Because Bubba Gump Shrimp and Starbucks are f**king everywhere. So, yes, it’s changing a little bit.
Teller: We’ve always been a flavor for people who have a personal take on the intellectual form of magic. There were magicians in here before. Siegfried and Roy are also partly responsible for the idea that you could have a full evening magic show [in Vegas] and people would come. They broke the ground for us. But they were in a sort of a European tradition, and we’re in a super American tradition.
Penn: Without Siegfried and Roy, what would have been available to us is a 12-minute variety hunk, and we’re not good at that. We probably would have never played Vegas. Vegas is, by almost any metric you can think of, the magic capital of the world. And that’s kind of nice. Although I’m not particularly social, being able to socialize with Mac King and Piff makes a difference in my life.
I can’t imagine Piff the Magic Dragon, or Matt Donnelly the Mind Noodler, existing in Vegas without you.
Penn: Magic has changed. You know, we work on [TV show] Fool Us. We can’t have any input on the booking on Fool Us, because that would be unfair and hurt the show, but we do have aspirational advice.
What we said was, “Book people that don’t look like us. We have the old white guy demographic covered with the two of us; get people that don’t look like they belong to our club.” And we’ve been very successful in that. I mean, I don’t imagine you’re aware of how appalling the misogyny in magic is, but The Magic Circle, which is the biggest magic club in England and in the world, did not allow women in until the mid ’90s. Roll that around.
You’ve both settled in here nicely. Do you like Vegas these days?
Penn: We got a good bookstore, and some performing arts places. It’s getting groovy here. I raised two children here, and they are Vegas natives, which continues to startle me. They don’t have a Northeast accent. They have a Vegas accent, and that troubles me. [Chuckles.] Vegas is doing well. However, our country’s not in a place that’s conducive to Vegas’ welfare now. I’m not the one to talk to—read the New York Times—but, you know, down 11% and the tariffs. …You’ve got crazy political policies that trickle down, so that Piff can’t afford his merchandise because of the tariffs. Our merchandise has gone through the roof because of the tariffs. That cuts into income in a very real way—and let’s just cut to the chase and say that not allowing people in from other countries, we lose, what, 200 people a night, because we don’t have England, Australia and Canada. Because who the f**k is going to come here? And then the economy, banking and people being uncomfortable. And this is probably a stretch, and I can’t prove this intellectually, but I feel that the country being full of hate makes people less likely to go out and have a good time.
Speaking of going to shows: Teller, can you talk about your support for the local theater scene, particularly the THIRD Street theater incubator project?
Penn and Teller
Teller: Have you been to any of the small theater shows around town? They’re really good. We have a lot of very, very skilled performers who might be in shows like Cirque, where they’re locked into a particular form routine that they really can’t change because they’re just actors in a preexisting play. I’m sure that they have cravings to do stuff that’s more original and more to their own taste, something that doesn’t require you to have an audience of 4,000 to make the break-even point. And in a way, the people who did the Smith Center opened this door by saying, yes, you can consider legitimate forms of entertainment that are not necessarily gigantic shows full of Eastern European athletes doing gymnastics in funny masks. …
The lower your budget, the lower your break-even point, the more apt you are to do more daring stuff. And THIRD Street is one of several places in town that are trying to open that up. I like the ambition, and I just happen to be friends with Daz Weller, [one of the partners] behind THIRD Street, and he’s a wonderful director. I’ve seen many of his productions, and he’s just a good guy. That place deserves to succeed.
I’m glad you’re still at the Rio. Congrats on 25 years. I hope you stay there for another 25 years.
Teller: I love working at the Rio. I honestly do. We have a beautiful, highly functional, proper theater.
Penn: Jesus, I just realized for the first time saying this to you, that that’s half our career, at the Rio.
Teller: By that time, how old will I be? [Chuckles.] My father told me to die at the age of 84. He said, “After 84 or so, it starts to get a little less fun.” And I can understand that. But keep in mind, my father lived to 91 and my mother lived to 96, so the chances of my retiring before death are very slim. I picture some night when we’re doing a trick that involves me being in a box, and Penn coming out and saying, “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, let’s take a look in here. Oh, he’s dead. Show’s over.”
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