Name: A Magical Show with Justin Willman | You Made It Weird
Uploaded: 2025-07-23T14:00:48.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'A Magical Show with Justin Willman | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-07-23. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'A Magical Show with Justin Willman | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-07-23. Transcript available.

A Magical Show with Justin Willman | You Made It Weird

You made it weird, you made it weird, yes you did, you made it weird, yeah, you
made it weird, with Pete Holmes, you made it weird, yes you did, you made it
weird, yeah, what's happening weirdos, this is the return of comedian, magician,
Justin Willman, and I, as you're about to hear, loved his special so much, it's
on Netflix, it's called Magic Lover, it is unbelievable, I say this in the
episode, but you need to see it.
I don't really go around recommending a lot of stuff, just in general, as a
person, but I have told everybody that they need to watch Magic Lover by Justin
Willman, and most people have been like, I know, I saw it, it was unbelievable,
it's one of the best hours of entertainment I've ever seen in my life.
It's hilarious, and even more so, it's unbelievable, it's incredible, it's for
everybody, so watch it, and tell people to watch it, couldn't mean that more.
If you'd like to watch me, a non-magical comedian, doing, I have certain
magical elements, there's some footwork I do that's pretty remarkable, go to
PeteHolmes.com, I'll be in LA at Largo on July 26th, after that we have DC,
Boston, New Hampshire, Washington State, St. Louis, Cleveland, Florida, Chicago,
Pennsylvania, New York, New York, we just added on there on November 14th,
finally, it's up on PeteHolmes.com, New York, I'm coming back on November 14th.
Followed by Atlantic City, New Jersey, on the 15th, check all those dates out
on PeteHolmes.com, and as we add more, they'll all be on PeteHolmes.com, this
hour that I'm doing currently is my favorite new hour of my entire career, and
I hope you can be there, and thanks to everybody that was in Edmonton, what a
wonderful show, what a great show.
All right, in the meantime, enjoy my chat with the wonderful, incredible,
delightful, and brilliant, Justin Willman. Get into it.
All right.
Yeah, buddy.
All right, where's that magic mind at?
Right here.
Are you in?
I love it.
I'm going to give him a little zen, you know.
Do it.
A little pocket of zen nearby here.
I do love a magic mind.
I'll have them send you a whole bunch.
I'll have them send you a whole bunch.
You'll love it.
I think it's great before shows.
This isn't an ad.
I find the specific up and down of it makes me feel ready to perform.
Well, I, do you find it sustains the whole show?
Thank you.
Yes, but it burns off in the course of a show, which I like.
Which is by design.
Because I want to be able to go to bed.
Yes.
But now, sometimes I'll sip a little red Coke, the regular Coke.
I have a superstition that I did.
The first time I got a standing ovation in my career, I drank a red can of Coke
before I went on stage.
So like the University of whatever, somewhere on the East Coast, I drank it.
And I got a standing ovation.
And I can't stress this enough.
When you've never had a standing ovation.
You're like, what did I do different?
What?
And I was like, it was that Coke.
But I just didn't know.
But it's an amazing feeling.
Do you remember your, welcome to the show.
We're going to get to that.
But first, right at the bat, cold open to the episode, do you remember your
first standing ovation?
Wow, that's a great question.
With a feeling of when you started going like, I think I'm figuring this out.
It doesn't have to be a standing ovation.
I think when I was a teenager, I was doing a bird act.
A bird act.
Which is with doves.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In the style of Lance Barton.
The prestige.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Prestige.
The prestige where you.
The dead bird.
You got to have a backup.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I don't think that was a common method.
How do magicians feel about the prestige?
We love it.
But the dead bird thing, I think, is a misnomer.
And it's a pretty harsh misnomer.
That's a bad one.
For all magicians.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That you're out there killing birds.
For every bird that appears.
There have to be some older methods that were.
Two birds, one trick.
You know?
Have you ever been like poring over old magic literature and been like, this
method requires
the execution of like a cow.
Like something brutal.
That we wouldn't do anymore.
There are some harsh things.
I think like there was a trick where you take a cigarette paper and you tear it
up and it
turns into a moth.
You know, that flutters away.
I think it involved like freezing the moth and then sticking it in like a small
tube that's
stuck to the back of your thumb for 24 hours.
Which is probably not good for the moth.
Although it's like a cocoon.
You know?
It's hard to know.
What is the price of wonder?
How long does a moth live?
That's a good question.
Because when you do a thing in your unbelievable special, and we'll get to that
question that
I just asked you about when you felt like you were starting to get good.
But when you, I don't want to spoil a single moment of it.
So we're really going to try not to.
But it's called Magic Lover.
Lover?
Lover.
Singular?
Mm-hmm.
It's the best thing I've ever seen in my life.
You did it.
Pete.
Really?
Put it on the poster.
Wow.
And change my name to Joe Rogan and you'll have a real thing going.
I'm just saying, we watched it and we, not only is it the, like, it's not just
the best
magic, I'm not putting it in any category, like best magic special.
I'm like, this is the best hour of entertainment we've watched.
We cried at the end.
Wow.
We involuntarily were both crying.
And I told that to Katie and I was like, it's not some schmaltzy like, and my
mother
I would be proud.
It's not like that.
It's just magic.
You dialed it in so amazing.
You know, I love magic.
Yes.
Very, very much.
You did what I've always wanted magicians to do and what every magician is kind
of trying
to do, I think, which is like, if I could do anything, if anything was possible,
what
would I do?
And you did it.
That's what it is.
Wow.
It's perfect.
Thank you so much.
It's hilarious.
I was cackling out loud, cackling, laughing so hard.
It's perfect for everybody.
You know, like you could walk kids or could walk kids or in the show.
But also the magic is so saturated with X factor.
I don't know what the, I'd like to know what the magician term is, meaning
random elements.
I know you know this, but like the show, it's not just, I'm going to, there's
things that
go by chance that get folded.
I don't mean, I don't mean, I'm trying to tell them.
Yeah.
Something happens that's random and it gets incorporated into the show in the
same way
that an improviser or a musician would use these like things that were like
wrong or like
clearly unplanned and everything.
It's an overwhelming experience of joy and majesty.
Wow.
It's unbelievable.
Thank you so much.
How does it feel?
I'm really proud of it.
Do you feel good about it?
I feel really good about it.
I hope so.
It's really hard.
You know, when you're, you know how you feel the crowd feels when you're, when
you nail
a show and there's no.
That's one show.
It's not being filmed.
You know, like when you're, when you're just out on, like, you know how good it
feels for
them and it's just the challenge of capturing that on camera for somebody on
their couch is
I couldn't, I can't even imagine the challenge of that.
Is that one show?
That was, that was mostly one show.
We shot two nights though.
Yeah.
Fantastic city.
St. Paul, you shot your special in Minneapolis right there.
Yeah.
Great people.
Great people.
It was cold outside.
They had nothing better to do.
So it was lovely.
The grateful market.
Yeah.
Thank you.
We're so cold.
But I.
Thanks for giving us something to take our mind off it.
I was, yeah, I think I was able to get.
Everything I was going for in, in there, you know, without.
I couldn't believe it, but you also seemed incredibly, in fact, that's my first
official
question.
Let's put, when do you feel like you started to have it dialed in to one side?
The number one thing I want to know is, uh, how much do you make a year?
No, it is heart rate.
I anticipate your answer is because if, if I'm thinking about doing some of the
things you're
doing, uh, technically, uh, my, my hands would start to shake, right?
Is it just repetition?
I'm talking about like, how do you stay calm?
You're filming.
I just filmed my new special.
Sorry.
I'm, I'm a little scattered.
I'm excited.
I was doing a set.
I had done 300 times and I'm on stage.
And I noticed that my leg was shaking and I was like, what?
25 years of comedy and my leg is shaking and I'm doing it.
And I start thinking about all the people that are going to see it.
Like during the set, second show was better.
I wasn't having that issue, but I'm curious.
How do you keep your hand like Leo DiCaprio and the Departed steady?
I want to know how you, what you do to regulate yourself.
Is it just repetition?
Please tell me everything.
Well, being able to do two shows and have that second show was a huge load off.
The first show was, was good, but it wasn't, I didn't walk off saying like,
that was the
best show of my life, you know, which I did the second show, which I did the
second show.
And in my head, like leading up to it, I've got, you know, cause there's a lot
of crowd work that
happens with the people that I randomly pick and these moments that have
happened over the
course of a couple of years, like in my head, I'm like, Oh God, maybe the man
would be great
if they said that, or if they did this, you know, just those funny things that
you can't
recreate and I try to push it all out.
I don't even want to call it crowd work.
Your interaction with your volunteers was right on really, really funny.
Yeah.
It felt really great that it's done.
It's so good.
Can you just take a minute to be like, we're talking about it.
It's done.
You filmed it.
Yeah.
You don't have to wonder how it went.
Cause there's right, right when you walk off stage, there's like, it's a little
done.
Yeah.
But then you're, when the edit, you're kind of like, is it, was it as good as I
felt?
Yeah.
But it, uh, you know, I don't do tons of technically demanding sleight of hand.
Yeah.
I do a couple like, you know, the bill trick that I do with someone's bill.
Did you develop that?
No, I learned that when I was like 14.
Wow.
Just, uh, you know, like a, a very useful sleight of hand skill that, uh, like
most of
the things that I'm really good at technically, I learned when I was a teenager.
Probably that's a brain thing, right?
Yeah.
The tricks you learn.
That I could, like, if I tried to learn a new sleight right now, I mean, it's-
We're closed.
It's exactly like learning, picking up the guitar now, forget about it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Forget about it.
Yeah.
I'm not that guy, the guitar guy at the party.
But like, and forget, you, you know, like, I always remember when David Blaine
did the
folding coin, but he did it so well.
Yeah.
You did that trick.
And I, I didn't think that when I was watching it, but you're saying here, it's
something that
you knew 30 years ago.
But you did it so well, and I hate to use the word patter, because you're, you're
really
doing more than that.
You're doing stand-up, telling a funny story.
So it's not just patter, it's not some memorized thing, but it's very engaging.
And you tied it into being a father.
I don't know.
I just, don't get me started.
I'll tell you what's perfect about everything, because it's the whole hour.
It's unbelievably perfect.
So, sorry, the, the, the, the, the, yeah, the steadiness, yeah.
Because there is, there's-
You're putting that phone in that bag pretty steady.
Yeah, that's true.
Um, I do have, like when I'm on live TV, I'll sometimes feel that, that, that
annoying shake.
And, and, and I don't know why it's not like I'm doing something new.
It's just something about that pressure.
Um, but the repetition, I think, you know, is what helped me.
I was also super sick.
I was like getting over a really bad cold.
I got all hopped up on, uh, antibiotics like the day before.
Yeah.
Like that week.
So I was losing my voice.
So I, I kind of was already a little bit out of sorts.
And so I just kind of went into a, a zone.
I think I 