Penn & Teller's Fool Us Advice

We asked past performers what it’s really like to chase that trophy—and what happens after.

May 01, 2025 • Reading Time: 14 minutes

"YOU FOOLED US!"

Have you ever dreamed of standing on stage as Penn Jillette leaps from his chair and shouts those unforgettable words at you? For some, this is the dream of a lifetime. To a few of our readers, this dream even became a reality.

Penn & Teller: Fool Us has been around for nearly fifteen years, gaining and maintaining its relevance among magicians. With over 150 episodes, hundreds of magicians worldwide apply to fly to Las Vegas to perform their act in front of magic's most famous duo.

But let's be honest–is fooling Penn & Teller still worth it? At this point, it's feeling like everyone has been on the show, and the ratings are nowhere near what they were in the early seasons. Only 439k viewers tuned into the finale episode of the season, which just finished, compared to 4 million viewers who watched the original UK pilot and the 2 million viewers watching the first US CW season.

We asked previous contestants for their thoughts and experiences and put together a bigger picture that will give you a look behind the curtain of one of magic's most successful TV shows. How did their appearances impact their careers, and what was it like to see their acts go viral online?

One early fooler, Kostya Kimlat, shared their business advice on maximizing the impact of participating in such shows with us. Their insights are gold.

A Smart Formula

Penn & Teller: Fool Us first aired in 2011. Although the first season was shot in the UK, the show was then moved to The Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino, with a unique format: in each episode, Penn and Teller would watch a few original magic acts, to try and spot the secret methods.

When they can't figure it out, the contestant is awarded a trophy, thus becoming a "fooler." Each episode features an average of four magicians and typically concludes with a performance of an original act from the duo.

Doing some quick calculations, we can estimate that over five hundred magicians went on the show, although some of them appeared multiple times (and some even fooled the duo more than once, too!).

It is remarkable that the show has survived for so long, and especially that they haven't run out of magicians yet. On the other hand, as the seasons went by, producers made it more and more accessible to be on the show, and at one point, they even left the casting email address on the Instagram bio of the show page.

(It’s also worth mentioning that Penn and Teller probably would never have agreed to perform an original routine at the end of each episode if they had known the show would surpass 150 episodes… hats off to them!)

The type of magic presented to Penn and Teller varies from practical routines by gigging magicians, tricks explicitly designed for television, FISM-style magic acts, and even magic designed to fool Penn and Teller.

Although the community has debated the benefits of assigning trophies only to those who make magic "fooling" (there is so much more that makes good magic – and Penn & Teller spent their careers before Fool Us repeatedly revealing secrets to demonstrate this), the show has always received appreciation from magicians for the way it showcases and praises great magic.

The show is a great marketing opportunity for Penn and Teller themselves, who position themselves as the judges of top magicians around the world. The show is shot in their theatre, making it very low-cost to produce, and it helps keep their name high and relevant both for the lay audience and among magicians.

But going on the show can also be helpful for a magician's business–at the very least, it's an excellent opportunity to get some high-quality footage for a showreel. To a greater extent, it is a fantastic way for magicians to promote their business and use the show as a reference to increase bookings.

The formula proved to be successful right from the start, with an average of 1.6 million people watching episodes of season one.

Over the years, viewership of the show declined to around 0.5 million viewers per episode in the current season. Yet, the show continues to air. Its relatively low production costs and strong marketing value for Penn and Teller likely play a key role in its longevity.

It's also worth considering that we live in the era of social media, and the majority of us consume less and less televised content than before. Not just that–the success of media content has to be traced by looking at all the possible avenues where it may go.

Clips of magicians on Penn & Teller: Fool Us consistently perform really well on YouTube, and a good number of them went viral, too. These videos attract an audience of magicians and laypeople in general. Although the content comes from TV, it now attracts a vast online audience.

On this note, it is also worth considering two more trends. The first is that most talent shows around the world have seen their views decline over the years (so we can say this trend doesn't just happen to magic content).

The second interesting point has to do with the fact that each magician going on the show does their best to promote and share their clip as much as possible. This contributes to the success of these videos online, even outside of the US, where the show airs. Interestingly, the show's producers take time to help the acts craft and publish the clips of their shows in the best way to encourage virality.

That's the big picture.

A Clever Approach

Then, there is more. We're talking about insights specifically for magicians, coming from like-minded performers who have gone on the show before. We discussed several aspects with them, including whether it's still worth it to fool Penn and Teller and whether it makes sense to go on the show at all.

We'll start with a name you probably have heard of.

Kostya Kimlat is one of the smartest business minds in the magic industry. He is a top corporate magician based in the US and was one of the early "foolers" on the show.

But Fool Us didn't just give him some nice footage for his showreel–it completely changed his career. We had to talk to him to find out more.

Kimlat appeared on the show twice, in season 2 (2015) and season 5 (2018). On his first appearance, he fooled Penn and Teller with a card trick he created–his version of the triumph plot.

For him, it all started with Johnny Thompson. Kimlat had shown him the triumph routine a few years before, and around 2014, he received an email telling him that Thompson had recommended him for the show. Kimlat agreed to participate, excited to spend more time with Thompson in Vegas for a week. At the start, he had no intention of actually fooling Penn and Teller.

It took several months of practice to refine the routine and come up with a new structure for it. He explained to us why he chose to perform that very routine:

"Number one, it needed to be my own trick. I didn’t want to do cover magic. Number two, I wanted it to be something that, if people found out how it was done, they would gain more respect for the art of magic. So I avoided anything gimmicked or self-working, because I knew the comments would just be, 'Oh, that’s easy.' My only hope was that if they did expose it, and it showed that I’m really good at manipulating cards, then in the end, people would respect the art of magic more."

Further in our conversation, Kimlat also disclosed one more vital criteria behind the choice of the routine: it had to be something he could perform on every occasion he was booked.

"I know some performers have created tricks for the show they would never do again. But as a full-time performer, I know that people will ask me everywhere to do that trick. It needs to be something I can always do.”

To Kimlat, performing these routines allows him to show the trick itself and tell people stories about his appearance on Fool Us.

We've heard from other performers that clients booking them will often ask them to perform the trick they saw them do on Fool Us, too.

Kostya Kimlat's first appearance on Fool Us has gained an astonishing 14 million views, while the video of his second appearance gained 12 million views. Kimlat made sure this content landed in a way that could fit and upscale his business, and did so in very clever ways–more on that later.

We asked Kimlat about the consequences the show had on his career, and if it is still worth attempting to fool Penn and Teller:

"I categorically think the show has transformed the lives of so many magicians. Suddenly people had a national spotlight that gave them a chance to perform. [...] I would say that every magician that goes on the show has the potential for the greatest video reel they can ask for.”

"The show also made it easier for people to hire me. For fifteen years, I was a local magician, and I was happy to do that for the rest of my life because I love magic so much. But after I appeared on that TV special, it brought new opportunities. People who never would have heard of me or seen me started reaching out for events. And now, whenever a group is involved in deciding whether to hire me and some of them are skeptical, they watch that video and say, 'Oh, well, he fooled Penn and Teller. He must be good!'”

Kimlat also shared some excellent advice for everyone who gets the opportunity to be on the show and is willing to make the most of it for their career. More soon.

A Deep Reason To Go

We also wanted to hear from someone with a completely different background and likely a different motivation for appearing on the show, so we reached out to Ella Nicholson.

Nicholson is a sixteen-year-old magician from Ireland who has been on the show in the eleventh season, which aired in 2025. She is up and rising and is determined to embrace magic professionally and do that for the rest of her life.

She appeared on the show with a uniquely original routine involving potatoes and Irish slang. Canadian magician Eric Leclerc played a key role in connecting her with the show's producers and guiding her through the entire process.

Although she didn't fool the duo, the video of her performance amassed over 300k views and counting.

For Nicholson, the stage at The Rio was bigger than ever before, especially given her background. As she told us with a smile, there were more people in that room than in her entire town.

She also had to make some complex last-minute changes. Two days before filming, the show's production asked her to change the script for her routine to make it more appealing to an American audience. Nicholson had initially included some jokes that would work really well for an Irish audience.

Her background played an important role in her choice to appear on the show. Coming from a small village and being "the only woman in the room" at her local magic club, Nicholson decided to do this for reasons related to representation and inspiration.

"Go back five years and not many girls were going to the show. I’ve even had a few young girl magicians reaching out after my appearance saying 'I never thought a girl could do something like that.' It’s hard to see it on TV so they don’t think they can do something like this.If I go to a table at the restaurant I'm booked and ask them to pick a card, they think I'm the magician's assistant. [...] I want to have an impact. In ten years' time, I want to look back and say to myself that I have made a difference and there are more young kids getting into magic."

Nicholson acknowledges that every magician on the show may have different targets and different types of audiences. If Kimlat's results were more business-oriented, Nicholson saw the show as more of a personal achievement and a way to inspire others.

These two different ideas do not clash at all: just think that Nicholson addressed Kimlat himself as an inspiration for how well he handled his appearance on Fool Us.

Using her words,

"I knew the trick wasn't going to fool them. It wasn't about that. [...] My goal was go on, perform a piece of magic, show friends and family this is what I wanted and loved. Show people that they can do something. If I can inspire one person, that’s another magician in the world that adds to the statistics. Someone told me that only 8% of magicians are female—but what if just one can inspire even more to follow?"

Business Advice

We'll wrap this up with some gold advice we received from Kimlat. Even if you're not planning to go on Penn & Teller: Fool Us, we believe some of these points can be very helpful for other occasions, too.

  • Producers advise the contestants not to worry about fooling Penn and Teller. While everyone should take the advice, everyone should really try to fool them.

  • Have a very clear idea of who your audience is and who you're targeting. In his second appearance, Kimlat involved the presenter in a brief opening "Wow" moment—unrelated to the main routine—which allowed him to capture a classic, quick reaction on video. This clip became a valuable addition to his showreel and helped impress potential clients.

  • If you want the show to be a great business opportunity, you need to have your business set up and ready for it. In the weeks leading up to the episode's airing, Kimlat emailed every past client explaining he would go on the show and received several bookings just for that. He also reached out to local newspapers and wrote blog posts on his website to share insights from his experience on television. He rented a restaurant and organized a screening of his performance when it aired.

  • Especially if you're living outside of the US, you can use this occasion to educate your audience. Share with them who Penn and Teller are, bring them into the process of going on the show, and get their interest. Build momentum in the days leading up to the show.

As Kimlat says, the ball is in your court.

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