WEDNESDAY 7:52 PM MARCH 19, 2025 NYC
Is David Blaine a performance artist? A masterful manipulator? A stuntman? Most agree it takes a bit of all three to become the Harry Houdini of the 21st century, but for Blaine, magic is all about motivation. In a new National Geographic documentary series Do Not Attempt, the charming 51-year-old morphs into the Anthony Bourdain of magic, traveling the globe to learn tricks from his fellow performers, and kiss a few venomous snakes along the way. Last week at a premiere event in New York City, our senior editor Taylore Scarabelli and poet Riley Mac met with the mentalist, who immediately had the girls feeling full body chills—a magical night indeed.
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DAVID BLAINE: My hands are held. Watch. See how the cards start to vanish? See how the whole deck starts to disappear?
RILEY MAC: What?
TAYLORE SCARABELLI: Oh my fucking god.
BLAINE: The whole deck disappears except for the diamonds, and of course the card that you signed.
MAC: That’s crazy. Full body chills.
BLAINE: Then there’s no cards left. That’s the only problem.
SCARABELLI: It’s magic.
MAC: Oh yeah. It’s real.
SCARABELLI: I mean, this show is all about you doing these durational stunts, right? But then there’s this whole other side, the magic side. What do you prefer?
BLAINE: I love both, because they’re very similar. The idea is just working on something that’s difficult to find the secret to. There’s no traditional way to learn it. You kind of invent, reinvent, change, work on, and tweak it, and it’s a continual progression. And meeting these incredible people, these amazing magicians, is what I’ve done my entire life. Harry Houdini wrote a book called Miracle Mongers And Their Methods. And he really went in and explored with people that he was traveling with on the vaudevillian circuits. So, I was always excited by things that were real, but that seemed impossible, and the combination of escape and magic, which is what Harry Houdini did. He was always my favorite showman, magician, performer.
MAC: So, what is it about the endurance art that you’re drawn to? Because from my perspective, I go, “Is it masochism?”
BLAINE: No, I think it’s the idea of enduring whatever comes your way. Growing up with a single mother, I had to learn how to endure everything I was born with. My feet turned in, so I couldn’t swim fast. I couldn’t keep up with the kids in the YMCA. I had read about Harry Houdini holding his breath for three-and-a-half minutes. So, I would just hold my breath and swim. I became faster and faster and faster, just because I wouldn’t breathe. And the coach would go, “You have to breathe.” And I would say, “Why?” But then the older kids would come and compete with me, and I would just hold onto the ladder and stay under water for as long as I could. And I slowly built up the ability to overcome the body with the mind. And to me, that’s real magic.
MAC: Totally.
BLAINE: To me, it’s not trickery. It’s the closest thing to magic.
MAC: It’s like a fascination with how far the body can go.
BLAINE: That’s right. What we’re capable of. I don’t think it’s like, “Oh, I want to hurt myself,” no.
MAC: No, but you’ve got to ask yourself, right?
BLAINE: I think I’m always breaking my comfort zone because that’s where I grow. When I sit comfortably on my couch and do nothing, I don’t change. And I never come back with something interesting. But when I go out into places that I shouldn’t go and do magic or I try something that I know I should not be able to learn or do, that’s what drives me. By the way, I’ve worked on a move for 10 years, and I still don’t have it. It’s all about being repetitive. One of my favorite tricks is simple. It’s with the ring, but it’s just this. It’s nothing, but watch. From here—you see? It’s something I do over and over.
MAC: Incredible.
BLAINE: It’s working repetitively through failure. Repeat, try again, and keep going. That’s what this whole motivation is.
MAC: Fucking cool. Okay, what’s a magic trick that I could do to pick up girls?
BLAINE: I can’t teach it to you in one minute. I would have to spend—
SCARABELLI: Well, he just showed you one.
MAC: That’s right. The ring finger.
BLAINE: But this is still years of practice and I still can’t do it.
MAC: Is there an endurance challenge that you haven’t tried yet that you have a hankering for?
BLAINE: There’s one that I’ve obsessed over, which is a culmination of everything that I’ve ever done in my entire lifetime. But I’m not going to do it if it’s a great risk of death.
MAC: It’s top secret?
BLAINE: Yeah, I have the idea, and I’ve been working on it pretty diligently.
MAC: Okay. I’ll stay tuned.
SCARABELLI: What was the craziest thing you encountered while shooting this series?
BLAINE: It was a man in South Africa named Neville, who lost a leg in a snake-related injury. Went into a coma two times. He sits in a small enclosure with six black mambas, the deadliest snake in all of Africa, because he wants to show people that if you don’t attack them, they won’t attack you. If one comes into your home and you try to attack it, you will die or the snake will die. So, he sits in the smallest enclosure with six wild rescued black mambas, and just meditates with them. They come right up to him. It was one of the most intense and scariest moments of my entire lifetime, but somehow I managed to go in with him.
SCARABELLI: Horrifying. How do you prepare before you do a stunt like that? Do you have a relaxation technique?
BLAINE: It’s a slow learning curve. I start by processing it in my mind. Then I study people who have done similar things. And then I try to equate it from an almost mathematical point of view. What are the risks? What is the limitation? So, it becomes kind of like an estimation statistic. I slowly start to feel comfortable. Then, I imagine the worst-case scenario. And if it’s too great, then I won’t do it.
SCARABELLI: Do you read people while you’re doing tricks? Are you looking at me and seeing how—
BLAINE: Constantly, yeah. And people that know me really well, they don’t watch me do magic. They watch the people around me watching the magic. That’s what excites them. Because you can learn a lot about somebody by their reaction. And that’s what the show is, the whole thing is me reacting to these people doing these things that I consider amazing. I’m the audience. They’re doing the magic, and I’m running away screaming.
SCARABELLI: The tables are turning.
MAC: Wait, so you were anticipating that I was going to say 18?
BLAINE: That’s right.
SCARABELLI: Wow.
MAC: Incredible.
BLAINE: A lot of magic is that.
SCARABELLI: I’m feeling it. Thank you, David.
Content shared from www.interviewmagazine.com.