Legendary magician Teller explains how he helped design Mrs. Davis’ magic tricks

How do you escape from a barrel of acid without getting hurt? You can’t, at least according to Teller. The famed magician, one half of the comedy magic duo Penn & Teller, was brought in as a magic consultant on the Peacock show Mrs. Davisand had to explain that: yes, probably not.

“They thought maybe there was a way to actually drop someone in a vat of acid and let that person leave without any harm,” Teller says. “As someone who has the catch bulletI can tell you that those life and death things are not things you mess with.

As the show’s magic consultant, Teller was asked to read the scripts for all things magic — that means correcting terminology and making sure stage performances looked and felt right. It was Teller who pushed the show to do real sleight of hand even when it was Young Simone revealing a card to the audience. “People who write about magic write like magic is just special effects,” he says, bemoaning the impossible things he’s seen magic do on TV and in movies.

But Mrs. Davis – with all its questioning of reality and belief – necessary to move on. “[The creators are] very aware that they’re using a cheap magic act that has to feel real, like a central metaphor of sorts, to connect all these different themes of religion and stuff. So it seemed important to them – and I fully agree with them – to think of it as a level of reality that is not common in cinema and television.

Photo: Christina Belle/Pauw

Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images

And so Teller started helping design the world of magic that Simone dips in and out of as she grows up, finds God (literally), and wages a war against an AI that seemingly controls the world. His vision was that the magical performances would be the common thread that grounded the “highfalutin elements” of the show, even if it still pushed the boundaries of what you would see on stage.

“I took the liberty of imagining that our magical family has a really big budget — a David Copperfield budget,” he laughs. “But once [that was] done, I worked with them to ensure that what is shown is something that can be done.

Which means the acid trick Simone’s dad Montgomery (David Arquette) tries in episode 6 comes with Teller’s seal of approval, complete with plenty of in-the-weeds details about how he’d approach the act himself (“you go to should a man lay down on something that looks like a table or looks like a couch…” Teller notes, possibly fueling Simone’s mother’s conspiracy theory).Ultimately, his hope is that it’s not all about progress Mrs. Davisplot lines with magical accuracy, but getting the audience along for the ride – a key element to any magical performance he’s done.

“Magic is this, this very curious art form, isn’t it? It’s an art form in which it’s not really comfortable, in a way that this show isn’t exactly comfortable,” Teller says. “This is a show that constantly makes you say what is really going on here?

“That is precisely the central psychological element of magic. Because with magic you see something that you know can’t happen. And you say, how is it possible that I get this impression?”

That said, no, he doesn’t have a safe as secure as Celeste’s (Elizabeth Marvel’s).

“I have a safe that makes her magic stuff look small,” he laughs of his entire basement filled with 46 years of Penn and Teller props, complete with a “whole wall full of pigeon supplies” and no trash compactor-like entrance. “That is something that is too cool for us. […] I’m not trying to hide the secrets of our stuff from Penn!’