Interview: 'My Choices Were PENN & TELLER Or Prison!': Magician Penn on Celebrating 50 Years Of PENN & TELLER And Making Their West End Debut

Penn & Teller, the undisputed masters of modern magic are celebrating their incredible 50th Anniversary. Taking place at The London Palladium from Saturday 13 September 2025, the 11-date residency will mark the duo’s first ever West End run of a show. Renowned for their jaw-dropping performances, a joyous exploration of magic and comedy, Penn & Teller first performed together on 19 August 1975 and are now arguably the world’s most famous magicians.

We caught up with Penn to discuss how they got together, their half century together and how they are looking forward to performing at the iconic London Palladium.

So starting with a bit of a general question first; how did you first get started in both the worlds of magic and comedy?

Well, I didn't get started in the world of magic! Virtually all magicians start out with a love of magic when they're very young - Teller was five years old. I hated magic aggressively! To me, the idea of art was just supposed to open up your heart. The idea that you would have a supposed art form based on lying was repulsive to me. I was a juggler. Jugglers say that they're going to do something, they do it. Magicians say they're going to do something, and you trust they're not going to. “I'm going to saw this human being in half,” and they don't. So I had no interest. 

I'm old enough that there were variety shows on when I was a child. And I'd be waiting to see Led Zeppelin or The Who and there'd be some greasy guy in a tux with a lot of birds torturing women. It was like, “Get this guy out of here! Let's see the band!” And so I really had a chip on my shoulder. I was a very good juggler, and I did a lot of card stuff, but not really tricks - just manipulating the deck. And I met Teller. Teller is seven years older than me, so he was teaching high school the whole time I was in it, but different schools. I bitched about how terrible magic was, and he told me what he liked about it, and Teller and I wondered if you could, do magic that wasn't condescending and insulting to the audience, that had full consent. And consent is actually the word that matters. Many magicians like to muddy the water and have the audience leave the theatre believing things a magician knows not to be true. You have consent for the time you're on stage to misrepresent things so that the audience can playfully study how we determine truth. So Teller and I had a conversation on that which essentially lasted fifty years!

It’s a fascinating take on magic!

Jerry Seinfeld said, “All magic was, here's a quarter. Now it's gone. You're a jerk. Now it's back. You're an idiot.” Guys who couldn't get laid in high school with a chip on their shoulder about it, saying, “Ha, ha, I can do this and you can't.” Which is the most anti-theatre, anti-art position you could have. Allen Ginsberg said “The poet must stand naked on stage.” The idea that you can show some of your heart while doing things that are tricks is rather complex and interesting to me. The idea that you'd be unpleasant and condescending about it is awful. You don't see Taylor Swift coming out and going, “I can play guitar and you can't, ha ha ha,” and yet, that's your magic act. 

Can you tell us a bit about the beginnings of your collaboration with Teller?

Teller was a high school Latin teacher, and I got out of high school and then hopped trains and hitchhiked around. Teller had other marketable skills - my choices were pretty much Penn & Teller or prison. I was sleeping rough, hopping trains, juggling at bars, doing that stuff. We met through a mutual friend, a guy who sold me a stereo and went to college with Teller. I was sixteen, and I bought the stereo from this guy. He asked me if I could throw plungers to stick to a wall. I said, “Well, I can learn anything!” That's a really hard trick, but I learned it. And then while the orchestra played Khachaturian's “Sabre Dance,” I threw plungers and stuck them. Teller was there reciting Latin poetry that he'd written. We got to talk about magic, and I told him the problems I had with it, and how I was a juggler. 

Then for the next few years, I just hitchhiked around. When I was in New Jersey, I'd stop and see Teller, and he'd buy me supper, which is the only reason I went to see him! And we would talk intellectually about what we're doing. It's never, “Oh, this is a nice trick that I saw someone do.” It's an idea we can express. Teller and I are both breathtakingly pretentious. So Teller and I talked very abstractly and very seriously about if you could do magic with full consent, with full respect, without condescension, and do really beautiful stuff. And we started doing that really right away! We started doing shows! Turns out that we were off by little more than an order of magnitude about how many people would want to see us, which still I find astonishing, because we do odd things.

What has it been like to be collaborating for fifty years now?

Well, I don't know what it's like not to! I've never done anything else. I was just turning twenty when we started Penn & Teller, so I've never done anything else. I think the big difference between us and the way everybody else collaborates is all we care about is the show. We don't have personal arguments about anything. We only argue about the show.

Over the years, we've become very close friends, but I don't care very much about how he lives his life. We both show up on time, we both care about the show and we both work on the show really hard. That seemed a little harsh! When my my children were born, Teller was the first one to meet them outside of hospital staff and family. When our parents died, we talked to each other about that. But, day to day, it's not like we get together and have supper and say, “What'd you do today?” We keep our lives a little bit separate.

You’ve had experience with the West End, with the creation of Magic Goes Wrong. What was it like collaborating with Mischief Theatre Company for that?

When I saw The Comedy About a Bank Robberty and The Play That Goes Wrong, it was just perfect, just beautiful. And included a couple magic tricks that were wonderful, very successful! I'm, rather shy, so I didn't meet them. I just saw the show and split. But Teller's rather outgoing, and he went backstage and met them and thought they were wonderful. We met Henry [Lewis], Henry [Shields] and Jonathan [Sayer]. They came to us and said they wanted to collaborate, and we were flattered, but we didn't have any time, so they came out to Vegas. To be in a room with them felt like what I imagine Monty Python at their absolute peak would have been - just the fastest, funniest, improvisational people I've ever been around.

They're very different, but I can't think of three people more talented, funnier, kinder and more wonderful than the three of them. They are perfect. They're just fabulous. And then we put together the show. The show was very well-reviewed, and then, Covid hit. It's hard to get it up again, so we haven't done it since, but it was just one of the greatest experiences ever. 

And so you've had experience performing in the UK before. Do you notice much of a difference between UK and American audiences?

I'm very fond of saying, and it's correct, there's no changes in audiences anywhere for us, because we don't deal with political and cultural issues. It’s our own weird, little ideas that we're dealing with, so there isn't much difference when we play Mississippi to when we play New York. All that having been said, London is my favourite, because London just seems this much more paying attention. Everything gets a little bit deeper, richer, a more correct response.

What is it like performing magic live on stage versus television shows?

We did thirteen years of Penn & Teller: Fool Us, which is why the next thing I'm going to say will sound very hypocritical, but that's okay. I'm a hypocrite. You can't do magic on TV. You just can't.

But the feeling of being in a room with people with no technology, no camera tricks, no camera angles, nothing, being in the room with someone who is doing things that appear to be but can't be impossible, is an experience that is unique in live performance.

And yet,on television, that happens every twenty seconds. When you see magic and you're live in the room, it's something you can't get anywhere else. So it's pretty nice to be on stage with people having their minds blown, and you work hard to try to make that happen. When it does happen, it's a pretty groovy feeling.

What do you hope audiences take away from a Penn & Teller show?

An autographed poster and programme! I hope they think like everybody does all the time, that how we ascertain what's true is one of our most important missions in our life. The other ones, of course, are kindness and love and what you can do to help other people. But after that, determining what's true is really important, and doing that with skill.

If you don't do that was skill you don't have a country anymore. I mean, that's not what our show teaches, but it certainly is the subtext of all of magic that's done morally right is ascertained. Truth carefully. And in the United States, we've decided to be, you know, well, I guess, epistemologically, hedonistic, if it feels good, believe it. And that's leading to some very, very dangerous things. 

And finally, how would you describe a Penn & Teller show in one word?

And! Penn and Teller, it's both of us. That was the idea. Could you do a two person show with no compromise on the part of either person, either in the writing or in the performance? And that's a pretty big deal - people don't pull that off very often. Simon and Garfunkel, it's really Simon. Jagger and Richards, it's really Richards. But having that no compromise whatsoever is pretty neat. So “and” is the word.