Ellen DeGeneres has been very friendly to magic on her talk show and this week was no different, with Eric Ross on the program. In no particular order, and with no disrespect to those who have performed very well on the show and did not make the list, are five of our favorite magic moments.
James Galea’s “Sam The Bellhop”
In his American television debut, Galea demolishes Ellen and juices the audience with an extremely polished routine that maximizes the hallmark of Ellen magic success, the incredulous “screw you, how’d you do that?” look of the astonished host.
Criss Angel’s Halloween Mentalism
Criss tends to repeat a lot of his talk show appearance routines (a symptom of doing so gosh darn many of them, no doubt) so we are partial to this spooky Halloween flavor of his mentalism routine.
Neil Patrick Harris’ imitation of Hans Klok’s Spiker
If there is one man who uniquely defines Ellen’s magic content it’s probably NPH. The award winning actor and Magic Castle board member has saved his biggest illusions for Ellen’s stage and expertly mixes his sly humor and celebrity into his performances.
Full disclosure: we wanted to post his boldest magic appearance, which ended with his head “accidentally” getting chopped off by a guillotine, but we couldn’t find a full embeddable video.
Mike Jacobson’s impromptu frying with Invisible Deck
Another very unique performance saw Champion of the Proletariat DeGeneres fishing talented audience members from their seats and asking them to perform on stage. One of them was Mike Jacobson who did a a better job with zero preparation than many who have weeks to get their ducks in a row.
Mike also benefited from a very engaged Ellen who vamped a bit during her shuffling of the Invisible Deck.
Shawn Farquhar’s daughter-enhanced close-up routine.
One of the ingredients we often find missing with magic routines is humanity. Farquhar does a nice job of setting up the idea of his daughter early in the interview so by the time her picture is used as a kicker, the familiarity spices up the revelation. Very cool.
Disagree? Did we miss any? Comment it up!