Dealing With Challenging Spectators on TV

I’m not a performer, so this post is not advice for your close-up gigs. Instead, my perspective here is from a TV angle, which is unique for challenging spectators.

Several years ago, I was on a magic TV show in which a female magician performed impossible magic to unsuspecting male contributors. It was an expensive shoot, with a pricey location that we could only book for a full weekend (even when we only needed it for four hours). Due to the number of extras required for the shoot and the length we went to set up contribs, we only had three opportunities to capture the performance.

The second contributor was an awful, awful man. The worst man. He arrived drunk and spent the entire time negging and insulting the magician. It sucked. He was sexist and verbally assaulted the performer. The executive producer let the magician know via an earpiece that we could stop if she wanted to.

The worst part about watching this all unfold on the monitors wasn’t the urge to leap out from our hide-out and punch the guy in the face. The worst part was knowing that if this man gave the best reaction to the tricks that night, we’d need to make him look like a lovely fellow in the edit.

That’s right; if he gave the best reaction, we’d need to edit around all of his awful sexist remarks. Maybe one day, he’d be in the pub showing the clips to his mates and boasting about how well he comes off on the telly.

We all knew this; the camera operators, the extras, the producers and the soundie hovered in this weird silence for the whole performance. No chatter on the comms (radios). We knew this challenging spectator was a terrible person, and we might all be a part of making him look lovely on national television.

And he was giving great reactions to the magic…

After the performance, we went in for what’s called a post-match interview. This is when the spectator tells someone off-screen, presumably a producer, about what happened and says things like, “I just don’t know how they did it!?” “I just can’t believe it,” “Definitely the best thing I’ve ever seen.”

The awful contributor decided to say something truly disgusting during the post-match interview, and as if by magic, the soundie dropped the boom mic and hit him on the head with the metal pole.

It’s all about the edit.

It would help if you learned to perform with the edit in mind. If it’s your show, the edit is on your side. Good performers will prompt spectators to say certain things. They won’t talk over the spectator because that makes the edit difficult. If a magician messes up a line, they’ll automatically start over, knowing their first attempt will be cut from the edit.

It’s incredibly challenging to do, but the best performers are edit producing live in their head.

This isn’t normal.

And a lot of real-life magicians take time to adjust to television. For example, if you do something you’re not 100% satisfied with in real life, you’d probably continue. But on pre-recorded television, you can happily step back and repeat something or even pick it up afterwards.

On a magic studio show, some of the most experienced TV magicians would quite literally stop and repeat a line in front of a live studio audience and all of the cameras. In the edit, we’d cut the poor line out. The less experienced TV magicians would stumble through it.

Some experienced TV magicians asked us to pre-record the magic moments from the best possible angles during their rehearsals. This wasn’t so we could drop it into the edit… it was so the performer could relax during the audience taping, knowing that they could focus on fooling the audience; worst-case scenario, we had a good shot of the trick.

If your spectator is a challenge, consider the edit.

And let’s be honest, challenging spectators make for the most exciting television. So my advice is to roll with the punches and forget about failing. Realise that however much of a challenge someone is, you have the edit on your side. Stay calm. Keep your composure.

Don’t let them get a rise out of you because you can happily cut around their remarks in the edit. But, equally, you can lean into their rudeness in the edit. Make them look as rude as possible. There are a lot of clever ways to resolve these situations in the edit.

Don’t rush. A five-minute performance on television can happily take fifteen mins in real life. It’s a lot easier to shorten a trick in the edit than extend it.

Pay close attention to which sections of the performance you know are necessary to the final edit. And which shots will be used in the edit at each moment.

I’ve been on shows where after the challenging contributor has left, we’ve picked up some lines from the magician. Perhaps a joke response to one of the contribs quips that a producer or writer came up with. In the edit, we’ll drop it in pretty seamlessly.

What about live television?

These live television hosts are often a challenge through absolute naivety. They roll with the punches every single day. Arriving to work with no idea what will be on next. Just watch any episode of daytime telly, and you’ll see how chaotic it can be. This doesn’t always bode well for magicians, and even some of the best have been caught out big time by daytime television hosts being naively challenging.

I’ve been to live morning television studios three times, and every time it was quite literally the scariest experience of my life. During each ad break, people are quite literally sprinting across the set. Runners hold up dresses belonging to the next interviewee to see if they “strobe” on the cameras. Producers are going through notes with the hosts about the next segment, and TV Chefs are setting up their cooking area, and suddenly we’re live on air again.

It’s rare to find a magician who enjoys live TV interviews.

A Masterclass from Derren

Derren Brown with an absolute masterclass of how to act when put on the spot in a live television scenario. Below is the full clip, which you do not need to watch. As always with Derren, there is a chance this is all set up, and he knew Richard planned to challenge him… let me know if you believe it’s genuine?

Out of nowhere, mid-interview, Richard begins toying with a coin like some kind of James Bond supervillain and says, “Obvious, you know this is live, don’t you?”

He goes on to tell Derren that the last time he appeared on the show, he did a which-hand routine and that he’d like Derren to do it again right now, on the stop, on live national television.

Derren takes a sip of water and begins calculating an escape plan or at least several ways to murder Richard of Richard & Judy.

Richard looks incredibly pleased with himself. Judy does not.

Derren restores balance and removes the opportunity to fail on national television by betting some cash. If Derren did not bet money and failed to locate the coin, the sequence would be disappointing for the viewer at home… but now that there’s money on the table, it’s a win/win because both scenarios are entertaining for the viewer. Street performers will often lose simple challenges so that the audience can enjoy seeing a young kid from the crowd win a tenner.

Derren slips straight into his usual scripting pretty seamlessly. He drops in there that usually when he performs this, it’s easier because he has time to “do little things.”

Derren says he either does not know, or Richard doesn’t have it in either hand. By doing so, he covers multiple bases. He’s also decided that “not knowing” is better than going all-in on one hand and being wrong, even with what we’d assume is a 50/50 chance. Sometimes not knowing is better than being wrong.

It turns out Richard is a proper dick and doesn’t have it in either hand.

Derren lets out the stress and finally sends some verbal abuse in Richard’s direction, exclaiming, “What a meanie he is.”

Most importantly, Derren ends by conditioning the heck out of the hosts never to do that again; he shares how they have always supported him and thanks them for their continued support.

This is wonderful. I don’t think many magicians would have the composure to thank someone after tricking them like this on live national television.

What I take from Derren’s masterclass example:

• Stay calm and keep your composure.

• Take your time, drink water.

• Even the odds/diffuse the bomb.

• Drop fair reasons for failure.

• Not knowing is better than being wrong.

• Reassure the spectator to stay onside.