Justin Willman reveals his ‘biggest swing’ on ‘The Magic Prank Show’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
Justin Willman claims a prank “needs to subvert expectations.” For our recent webchat he continues, “As a magician, nothing subverts expectations like magic. I always think about pranks in terms of, ‘where’s the magic?’ How can you use trickery to alter someone’s sense of reality?” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
Willman hosts and executive producers the Netflix scripted variety series “The Magic Prank Show.” In the program the comedian and magician uses his gifts to pull off elaborate pranks. In the series he fulfills requests from people to prank loved ones in order to teach lessons.
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For one prank, Willman played a rideshare driver who takes his mark on a wild ride without looking, ending in an accident. It was to fulfill the request of the passenger’s girlfriend to teach a lesson about not driving while on the phone. Willman explains, “My problem with most prank shows is the empathy factor. I wanted to make sure at least everybody we pranked deserved it in some sense. And by the time the prank was over, they thought, ‘you’re right, we’re square.’”
In the season finale, Willman worked with his team to trick someone into thinking a sleep study had gone horribly wrong and he has woken years later to an apocalyptic world. The prankster reveals, “I wanted to make time travel in some sense real. He had to go to sleep in a doctor’s office and wake up in the desert. We had to move him without him knowing and without the aid of any drugs. So we wanted to use hypnosis. A lot of people thought it wouldn’t work. And I know for a lot of viewers it’s polarizing, but it was our biggest swing and it worked.”
On the logistics of putting their pranks on air, Willman says, “Once the prank is over and they know what they are being filmed for, they do need to sign something saying they are OK being on Netflix, and everybody signed. There were no pranks that didn’t air. And we had no margin for error, because I had stretched the budget as far as we could. Also, the people-pleaser in me doesn’t want anyone to leave upset.”
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