new series Miss Davis It’s privileged to feature one of the most obscure production jobs in Hollywood.
There have been animal hunters and humans wearing neon costumes to dance in front of green screens. Someone had to teach Harrison Ford to use a whip. Indiana Jones. And now, perhaps most bizarrely, the famous magic duo Penn & Teller’s Teller teaches Betty Gilpin to throw cards and perform flashy tricks on them. Miss Davis.
(Warning: Some spoilers ahead.)
Gilpin’s character (a nun named Simone), however, is steadfastly anti-magical. Growing up, Simone had to help her parents perform hockey tricks on a Vegas stage. Ultimately, magic killed his father (or perhaps not, as mocked in the latest episode, “Alison Treasures: A California Story”). Both her frantic upbringing and her father’s death led Simone to despise magicians – which eventually led to her hatred of the artificial intelligence master “Mrs. Davis” who declared herself to be half robot half magician.
Having performed quietly with Penn Jillette since 1975, Teller joined the show as an official “magic consultant” to assist with scenes involving cheating. He says that Simone’s hostility towards her job isn’t all that uncommon.
“There’s an aspect of magic that even when you love it, even at its best, there’s something troubling about someone successfully lying to you,” Teller tells The Daily Beast to Obsessed Over Zoom. “Even if that’s what you want, even if you paid for it, a small part of you is pulling back against it. It’s somehow a celebration of cognitive dissonance.”
Teller talked about why (yeah, he actually did) Miss Davis He asked how creators Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof consulted him while writing the show and how they used artificial intelligence to concoct acts of magic.
how did you get involved Miss Davis?
i played a role big bang theory Like Amy Farrah Fowler [Mayim Bialik] father. I briefly married Kathy Bates on TV! That led me to Tara. [who was a writer and co-executive producer on the show]. I’ve always been fascinated by how intense, how powerful, and in this case, incredibly original. They knew my job and even wrote some magic stuff. big bang theory, more.
what kills me [Mrs. Davis] In addition to perhaps the most creative thing I’ve ever seen on a television show, they decided they wanted to be as accurate as possible about magic and magic terminology so the magic family could have some credibility. They gave me the scripts and said, “Where are we using the right terms? Is this cheat something possible? How can we make it seem possible?” I had so much fun with him.
How often did you have to intervene to correct their work?
they asked me everything. “If we use the word force, is that the correct way to use it? If this was a real magic trick, could you do it the way we stage it? In some cases, the answer was no. Then they collaborated with me to find a reasonable way. There is a piece of magic apparatus that one lays on the table and then sneaks into the table. Instead of what was originally there, we created it, a table too thin for anyone to fit inside.
“Yeah, no problem!” As a magician, when watching movies about magic, you often say, “That’s fine, but obviously these are special effects that have nothing to do with the theatrical form of magic, and that’s what they’re portraying there.” They don’t say it’s real magic. They say it’s cheating. So my goal was to make it look a little less good so it would look a little more like cheating.
When we meet young Simone, she’s doing a big stunt in Las Vegas with her family. How did you help with the consultation in that big first act?
I was most worried that little Simone would catch her card. That’s why we taught grown-up Simone, Betty Gilpin – who’s awesome! God, he’s so awesome. We then taught him to do the movement you see sitting in the back of the car. [fake stage parents] as an adult. This is called the back palm. That sort of thing would work in these circumstances.
At the time, I was the one who said, “To pretend your wife is seen in the big window.” [case], you will need to fill it with smoke for a good heavy hit. If the person appears and disappears there, it will look like an optical effect. Yet what are they [did], could be done. It would be very, very expensive, maybe over that family’s budget. But it could be done.
In this episode, we’ll see the trick that potentially killed Simone’s father. But we don’t actually see it, we see a dramatization with CGI dummies. It’s not the first time we’ve seen the cheat itself. Why?
I know when they were working on it, they were very worried about it, because it’s going to have a big plot impact later on. It must be convincingly designed as a number one for inferences down the road.
Have you met people like Simone in the real world who hate magic?
I’ve met many people over the years who are vehemently against magic because magic is a very dangerous form. In essence, tasteless. On the one hand, you want it to surprise you. It’s human nature to look really hard at something and say, “No, that’s not how it’s done.” I always think of magic as this very basic art form, because it’s about the most important decision you make: “What’s really going on here?” You must make this decision before making any other decisions. And if you make a mistake with this decision, it is sometimes harmless, but often quite harmful. If you go for amulets instead of heart surgery [in other words: choose magic over science]This is a big mistake and could cost you your life.
So magic is that kind of playground where you enjoy making these mistakes, trying to figure out what’s going on and no bad consequences. The main character of this show [is] They’re interested in it because they’re dealing with perception, religion, and all sorts of great monstrous forces. And it exists in the midst of this cheesy act of magic that has become the symbol of all this.
Ms. Davis claims to be both a robot and a magician. As a magician, does that make sense to you?
I mean, that’s the biggest question of the show, right? The Magic Dragon Piff recently contacted one of these popular AI services and said, “Write a piece of magic for Piff and Mr. Piffles.” The AI creature is back with five scenarios, which Piff says, “About two of these are really good.”
This is a big question in the entertainment industry right now: Can AI write movies and TV shows? Do you think artificial intelligence can write magic tricks?
It’s fun to see what artificial intelligence can do. A few weeks ago I told AI to “Write a Pen and Wires piece”. The creature is back with some really funny, funny ideas that are a digest of things we’ve done in the past. I don’t know if this will be something we can make a splash and use in the future. When you produce a lot of material, you are always looking for ideas for something small to fire something up. I wouldn’t be surprised if AI fires something up, even by reminding me of something we did with Penn 30 years ago.
As a magician, what message about magic did you like? Miss Davis says?
The magic family involved is a family of rather cheesy magicians. So they are not my ideal of what great magic should be. But by putting the magic at the center, she is the center of what ultimately drives Simone. Everything goes there. It was a wise choice because the entire show features the acting of a magic trick. You don’t know who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy. You never know exactly what it is. So you’re always watching [Mrs. Davis] like an act of magic.
Putting a magic show in the middle of it tells me that the people who wrote the show understand the greater ramifications of magic, even if the version they had was pretty cheesy. This is one of my favorite things I’ve ever been involved in because it’s so bold. This show has rice balls and says, “You’re going to play control.” This is very different from most TV, which is all about “Sit there and be very pleased”.