Introduction
On Wednesday, November 11, Now You See Me Live begins a strictly limited eight-week engagement at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on Broadway. Produced by Tim Lawson and Simon Painter, the team behind The Illusionists, the show has played Sydney, Singapore, and London's West End since its premiere at the Sydney Opera House last December.
On stage, its four stars are the Horsemen: Canadian illusionist Darcy Oake, English magician and mentalist Matthew Pomeroy, escapologist Gabriella Lester, and English illusionist James More. In separate conversations recorded ahead of opening night, each of them talked about the moments that made them magicians, what it's like to perform in the show, and the books that matter most to them.
A guessed card and a box of VHS tapes
Darcy Oake's origin story begins with his father, the sportscaster Scott Oake, who found Darcy's chosen card and then let the mystery stand for weeks before admitting he had simply guessed.
"It was that feeling of being fooled and not being able to explain what I had just witnessed firsthand in front of my eyes."
Growing up in Winnipeg, before YouTube, Darcy borrowed tapes from the Society of American Magicians' video library. He copied them between two VCRs and posted them back, and he watched old FISM competitions from the 1980s until the stage acts put him "on the bird act bandwagon."
A theater kid at Butlin's
Matthew Pomeroy calls himself a theater kid. While his friends played sports, he bought day seats at the local theater and sat at the back, soaking it all in. Seeing Michael Crawford in Barnum made him fall in love with magic. His professional start came at Butlin's, the British chain of seaside holiday camps, where he was twice named Redcoat of the Year.
"They gave me a microphone every night and 2,000 people and just said, 'Do what you want.'"
A Sharpie and a straitjacket
Gabriella Lester was about ten when Shawn Farquhar performed at her school in British Columbia. What stayed with her wasn't the show but the autograph afterward, when he pushed the Sharpie up his nose and pulled it out of his mouth.
"I remember sitting in class for the next few weeks trying to put a Sharpie inside of my brain because that's how I genuinely believed the trick was done."
At fourteen, against the advice of most of her mentors, she set out to learn Houdini's upside-down straitjacket escape. She began by hanging from the monkey bars, pretending to be Houdini.
A shoebox and a puppet
James More's first piece of magic was a card trick he built at age eight from a shoebox and a deck of cards, to fill time in a school talent show otherwise devoted to circus skills and ventriloquism. Afterward, the adults talked only about the trick.
"For the first time, I sort of realized, 'Well, the adults don't have all the answers.'"
Magic with a puppet wasn't the coolest pursuit at school, he admits, but it won over his teachers. It even won over the school bully, whom James recruited as his assistant.
Breakthroughs
In 2014, Darcy became the first magician to reach the final of Britain's Got Talent, with a dove act he had been refining since he was eleven. He had spent his high school years afraid that classmates would discover his act. Simon Cowell's approval, he says, answered every doubt he'd had about whether magic could be cool. In 2016 he received the Allan Slaight Sharing Wonder Award from Magicana, and he used the prize money to sponsor students at the College of Magic in South Africa.
Matthew and his partner, Natasha Lamb, perform as The Conjurors, and their Las Vegas show Cabin of Wonders won a Best of Las Vegas award in its first year. Matthew loves the rhythm of a residency.
"I want to do a show once a day, six times a week, or even twice a day. It makes us better performers."
Gabriella first performed at Hollywood's Magic Castle at seventeen. For her first few years there she could only use the stage door, so she never saw the rest of the building. In 2024 she received the final Canadian Rising Star Award from Magicana. The news arrived by email while she was cooking dinner for her family.
"It felt like the first thing I didn't have to chase."
James performed at FISM, the World Championship of Magic, when it came to Blackpool. His 2013 Britain's Got Talent audition went on to pass 100 million views on YouTube. That led to arena tours with the dance group Diversity, and eventually to Simon Painter and The Illusionists.
Becoming a Horseman
Darcy made his Broadway debut in The Illusionists' Magic of the Holidays, and he sees Now You See Me Live as a different kind of show. The Illusionists put great acts side by side, while this one is a true ensemble.
"We're all tied together, we're all in it together, we're doing the full show together."
For Matthew, stepping out of the double act calls on a different skill set. He describes the show as "goosebump-worthy all the way through."
Gabriella was in the original company when the show opened at the Sydney Opera House, with her father in the audience. James's history with the show goes back further than anyone's. He was one of the original Horsemen announced in 2018, opened the show in China, and feared that COVID had ended it for good, before it came back "more popular than ever."
Inside the show
Darcy is excited to bring a big modern spectacle into the Al Hirschfeld, a vaudeville-era house. Matthew hosts and threads the show together, and the challenge he didn't expect was the camera.
"It was learning to perform almost a live movie every night."
Gabriella, best known for parlor work, has added new skills to her stage character. She has also found a new reason to perform.
"You see all these kids that are too small to fit in their theater chairs that are looking up at us on stage like we're superheroes."
James believes a classic effect is never finished. Appearances, vanishes, and levitations can always be developed, restyled, and improved for a modern audience.
The trick is never the point
Asked about his influences, Darcy said he learned authenticity from David Blaine, attention to detail from David Copperfield, and storytelling from Derren Brown. He points out that Brown’s shows contain only a handful of effects over two and a half hours, because the magic illustrates an idea.
Matthew works the same way. He and Natasha begin each new show with a wall of ten to fifteen Polaroid photographs and ask what moods they share. Their guiding principle is that if you took every piece of magic out of a show, the audience should still have an experience.
Gabriella spent a year as an associate producer on Penn & Teller: Fool Us, watching hundreds of acts with a critical eye. Turning that same lens on her own work, she says, has made her far more comfortable editing her own acts.
James calls David Copperfield his foremost inspiration, and credits Copperfield’s team of collaborators as part of the reason. In James’s view, Copperfield’s work from the 1980s still outshines that of any magician performing today, from the storytelling to the lighting and set design.
Special guests
Two guest performers will join the Broadway company. Eden Choi, the Korean magician best known as a 2025 Britain's Got Talent semifinalist, appears from November 11 through November 29. Matthew watched Eden from the wings at every performance and has collected the cards he leaves on stage.
"In 20, 30 years, people in magic will be talking about, 'Did you see Eden Choi?'"
From December 1 through January 3, the company will be joined by Korean magician Yollin Lee, The Magic Circle's 2024 Stage Magician of the Year in Manipulation.
Favorite moments
Without giving anything away, each Horseman named the moment they look forward to most. For Darcy, it's an escape stunt he has worked on for years.
"The thing that I'm looking forward to the most in the show is also the thing that I'm not looking forward to the most in the show."
Matthew loves the opening monologue, which he says feels like stepping into a movie. Gabriella looks forward to a moment that puts her back among the audience, doing crowd work up close. And James treasures a piece that gives the audience a feeling of nostalgia.
"As magicians, I think people feel sometimes that we're just out to fool them or to trick them, but it's so much more than that to us."
Their own books
Darcy's 2015 book, “Behind the Illusion,” argues that there are really only nine types of magic. What makes an effect feel new is the performer's personality and approach. Its fifth chapter, on disappearances, is titled Now You See Me, a decade before he became a Horseman.
"I had no clue it was gonna tie into this at all."
Matthew's Las Vegas guides look like the tourist guides found in any hotel lobby but hide 30 effects. He created them during COVID and still uses them in hotel lobbies.
Gabriella's first book is due early next year, and it will end with a chapter on this year. James hasn't written a book yet, but he knows what it would be about.
"Staying true to yourself and not comparing yourself to others and just trying to enjoy the journey."
Most cherished books
Darcy learned mostly from videotape, but one book changed his relationship with magic as a teenager: Henning Nelms's “Magic and Showmanship.” Matthew's prized possession is the out-of-print record of David Berglas's work, “The Mind & Magic of David Berglas.” For everyone else he recommends the Tarbell Course, alongside Annemann and Corinda's “13 Steps to Mentalism.”
Gabriella first found her favorite book in The Magic Circle's library while backpacking through Europe at eighteen. It was about the friendship between Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and she spent years hunting for a first edition.
James traced his path from his first magic book, by Jon Day, through Slydini and Tommy Wonder's “Books of Wonder,” to the illusion books of Jim Steinmeyer.
"I think it's important to read because although you can learn maybe faster from watching on a video, you pick up certain habits of other people."
Conclusion
The four Horsemen took very different roads to Broadway. One started with a father's lucky guess, one with a seaside holiday camp, one with a Sharpie, and one with a shoebox. On stage they now share an ensemble show, and in conversation they share a conviction that the magic serves something larger: a story, a feeling, a theater full of children on the edges of their seats. For Matthew Pomeroy, the Broadway run will be "an exclamation point on our careers." His advice to everyone else is simpler:
"Don't miss it. Like, really don't miss it, because these things don't come around often."
Our thanks to Darcy, Matthew, Gabriella, and James, and to the team at Aperture PR.
Books and Publications Mentioned
“Behind the Illusion: Unlocking the 9 Types of Magic” by Darcy Oake (Cassell, 2015).
“Las Vegas Gambling Guide” by Matthew Pomeroy (Saturn Magic, 2022).
“The Power of Magical Women” by Connie Boyd (Vanish Press, 2025).
“Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook for Conjurers” by Henning Nelms (Dover Publications, 1969).
“The Mind & Magic of David Berglas: As Revealed to David Britland” by David Britland (Hahne, 2002)
“The Tarbell Course in Magic” by Harlan Tarbell (Louis Tannen, book series beginning in 1941; subsequently published by D. Robbins & Co.; expanded to eight volumes).
“Thirteen Steps to Mentalism” by Corinda (Tony Corinda) (Tannen Magic, 1968 U.S. hardcover edition; originally issued as separate instructional booklets).
“Houdini and Conan Doyle: The Story of a Strange Friendship” by Bernard M. L. Ernst and Hereward Carrington (Albert and Charles Boni, 1932; also published in Britain by Hutchinson, 1932).
“Let's Make Magic: Over 40 Tricks You Can Do” by Jon Day (Kingfisher Books, 1992).
“The Annotated Magic of Slydini” by Lewis Ganson, with annotations recorded by Dr. Gene Matsuura (L&L Publishing, 2001)
“The Books of Wonder,” Volumes 1 and 2, by Tommy Wonder with Stephen Minch (Hermetic Press, 1996).
“Before We Begin” by Asi Wind (Vanishing Inc., 2021).
Selected books by Jim Steinmeyer
“Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear” by Jim Steinmeyer, with a foreword by Teller (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003)
“The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo, the ‘Marvelous Chinese Conjurer’” by Jim Steinmeyer (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2005).
“Art and Artifice: And Other Essays of Illusion” by Jim Steinmeyer, with an introduction by Neil Gaiman (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006).
“The Last Greatest Magician in the World: Howard Thurston Versus Houdini & the Battles of the American Wizards” by Jim Steinmeyer (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2011).
“The Secret History of Magic: The True Story of the Deceptive Art” by Peter Lamont and Jim Steinmeyer (TarcherPerigee, 2018).
Resources
Now You See Me Live on Broadway, at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, 302 W. 45th Street, New York, from November 11, 2026 through January 3, 2027: https://broadway.nowyouseemelive.com/
$42 digital lottery tickets via Lucky Seat : https://www.luckyseat.com/
$42 digital rush tickets via the TodayTix app, from 9 a.m. ET on the day of each performance, plus in-person rush at the Al Hirschfeld box office
Magicana: https://www.magicana.com/
The Magic Circle, London: https://themagiccircle.co.uk/
Episode 1 of The Magic Book Podcast: Julie Eng
Episode 21 of The Magic Book Podcast: Connie Boyd
Timestamps
00:48 Introduction
01:55 Darcy Oake and a guessed card
03:21 VHS tapes and FISM competitions
04:24 Matthew Pomeroy, theater kid
05:35 Lessons from Butlin's
06:42 Gabriella Lester and Shawn Farquhar's Sharpie
08:09 Houdini's upside-down straitjacket escape
09:30 James More's shoebox card trick
11:23 Magic, a puppet, and the school bully
12:10 Darcy's Britain's Got Talent breakthrough
15:03 The Allan Slaight Sharing Wonder Award
16:56 Cabin of Wonders in Las Vegas
18:21 Gabriella at the Magic Castle
19:30 The Canadian Rising Star Award
20:43 James at FISM in Blackpool
21:42 100 million YouTube views
23:13 Becoming a Horseman
24:42 Matthew steps out of the double act
25:36 Opening night in Sydney
26:25 James, from 2018 to Broadway
28:13 Darcy on the Al Hirschfeld Theatre
29:14 Matthew's role and the live camera
30:47 Crossing the Atlantic
31:49 Gabriella's role in the show
32:53 The kids in the audience
33:45 Making classic effects feel new
35:05 Darcy's influences: Blaine, Copperfield, and Derren Brown
36:56 Matthew's Polaroid method
38:49 Gabriella behind the scenes at Fool Us
40:01 James on David Copperfield
41:20 Special guests Eden Choi and Yollin Lee
44:13 Favorite moments in the show
48:30 Darcy's “Behind the Illusion”
50:20 Matthew's Las Vegas guides
51:35 Gabriella's first book
52:04 The book James would write
53:27 Most cherished magic books
58:30 What makes Now You See Me Live unique
59:31 Thanks to the Horsemen
59:59 Podcast closing remarks