Testing, testing. One, two, three, testing. Say hello.
-Hello, hello. -Hello, hello, hello.
There are two magicians, Harry Kane and Karl Allen,
who were quite a successful magician double-act.
Oh, man, we rock! We rock so hard.
And then they fell out
because one of them was having an affair with the other one's wife.
Where's Karl?
Oh, I don't know.
What the... Karl!
Okay, look, so maybe this has happened,
but let's just, for the next hour, pretend it hasn't happened.
How would you feel about that? Does that sound like a plan?
When the betrayed magician finds this out,
there's an awful catastrophe that happens onstage.
I accidentally cut my wife's head off in a guillotine trick.
Total accident.
But Karl, played by Rob, thinks it's deliberate.
We join the action about four years later,
when they've gone their separate ways and they're both struggling slightly.
What about in the shop?
I could dem a few tricks. I might be something of an attraction.
Not in a good way, Harry.
Our lives are a bit screwed.
As a sort of last throw of the die, we decide to get back together
to try and win a magic competition, win a bit of cash.
It would be strictly business.
In, win, split the money, goodbye.
No bar chat, bonhomie, or late-night laugh sessions.
If you're interested,
please state the word "interested" at this point.
Interested.
Good. Then, I was thinking for the prelims,
we could do the cut-down routine, the 10-minuter.
If you're on board please state, "See you there, Harry,"
and we will see each other there.
"See you there, Harry."
-Likewise. Goodbye. -Goodbye.
Likewise.
Andrew O'Connor, the director, came up with the idea
and sort of worked it out with a few magician mates.
We wrote a treatment of that over about eight months.
We really liked the idea of doing a movie about magicians.
It seemed like a very original and funny, interesting area
that hadn't been done before.
It was fairly clear that we wanted to go with Robert and David as the stars.
Even though the script wasn't originally written for them,
in a funny sort of way I think it probably was,
because their voices were very much in their heads as they were writing the characters.
Both of us were basically half expecting Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson
to step in at some point to replace us, but they didn't do that.
Fortunately, David and I are still cheap enough to be in this film.
No, that's not the truth. That's not at all the truth.
They write for my voice very well,
which is great 'cause it means I don't have to do much acting,
or, you know, put on a Geordie accent or anything.
Sam and Jesse somehow manage to find real bits of Robert and David
and pull those into the characters.
So, this is nice. You've got a nice flat.
I bet you say that to all the men whose flats you go round to.
Not that you go round to loads of men's flats.
Rob and I have been working together,
although it was initially just pissing around when we were students,
but what we now call "working together," for maybe 13 years now.
Well, weeks go by where we basically can't stand the sight of each other.
-Yeah, it's quite boring. -Yeah.
Well, actually, the hate is kind of fun, in a way. It keeps us sort of lively.
Oh, yeah.
David is just this personification of Middle England, you know.
If you wanted to remake Hancock, I think David would be brilliant in that.
And Robert's sort of cooler,
and sort of, you know, that slacker generation thing that he has.
So they're very, very different, both as people and as actors,
but somehow they manage to complement each other perfectly.
It's quite a relief to hear you say that.
It's very nice to be able to know so clearly
the actors who're going to be reading your lines,
because then you can feel very comfortable writing for them
and then know what was going to make them funny.
Sometimes people can get a bit carried away
with the difference between film and TV comedy.
In general, it seems pretty similar, but you have to be aware
that your face might be suddenly the size of Mount Rushmore.
You know, have to calm down the gurning.
Otherwise, it's just going to hurt people.
You'd better shut your mouth, Karl. Just shut up and apologise.
Shut up and apologise?
Our characters' relationship is that of two friends who have fallen out.
And they worked together for years, and so there's a lot of chemistry.
Harry is a very repressed man.
He's got deep feelings of unhappiness and unfulfilled ambitions and guilt.
A slightly autistic kind of socially-incompetent,
but very technically-able, geeky magician.
And in the last five years
have there been any major changes to your circumstances?
I am widowed. I'm a widower.
And do you mind if I ask, for the form, how she died?
Right. She... She was...
-You know. -No. Sorry.
I actually cut her head off with a guillotine.
Shit!
So I think he's got a lot of excuses for being a little bit tentative with the world.
A lot of double-acts, they're very different people.
Harry's much more technically minded,
more of a guy who'd be more comfortable in his workshop than onstage.
And Karl's much more of a showman, much more ambitious.
You must admit, it is going well.
Maybe. Maybe, so far, the whole thing isn't a total fucking fiasco.
I play Karl Allen, who used to be a magician,
but since he split up with David's character, Harry,
has moved more into mentalism.
I'm sorry, but I'm in the middle of a meeting.
I would like you to dip into your brain and think of a word.
Would you both please leave immediately?
A word, a simple word.
Okay, dickhead.
-My word is "dickhead". -Perfect.
There's a hierarchy that, you know, people who can do very clever...
Manipulating cards and deft things with their hands, they're sort of at the top.
And then mediums who pretend to communicate with the dead
are kind of near the bottom.
Medium? You're going to do psychic?
It's with a very modern twist.
Oh, my God!
Is...
Is there a John in tonight?
A Mr John something?
Seriously, no Johns?
All of the characters in the script are so carefully written and carefully contrived
that they needed to be cast with just as much care and attention as the leads.
Linda is the female lead.
And she's the girl who has to fall in love with David Mitchell's character, Harry.
She's quite, sort of, up for it. She's quite fun.
Doesn't take life too seriously, doesn't take herself too seriously,
just wants to kind of have a bit of a laugh.
Which is why she's interested in becoming a magician's assistant.
You see, I really, really want to do this.
I brought a CD to audition. It's not magic.
It's just a dance routine me and Karen used to do
in the stockroom.
She just does a dance to Gay Bar, which is kind of fun.
So, if you just want to imagine that there's two of us
standing next to each other just doing pretty much the same thing.
That's my audition, basically,
to try and persuade Harry to let me be his magician's assistant,
having had no experience.
I meet Linda when I'm demonstrating knives in a shop.
Bloody hell! Are you all right?
Of course, with a knife like this,
you're never likely to be depressed or lonely.
I'm making a complaint.
Darren Boyd, who's been making me laugh for a very long time,
and he plays Otto brilliantly.
I am Mind Monger, and I am about to enter your brain.
I don't know. The beard just feels wrong.
Then let's lose the beard, man.
You're not married to the beard.
As your agent, that's why I'm here, help you make these hard choices.
He has an unbending enthusiasm and a genuine passion, shall we say,
for his involvement with Karl.
-Harry? -Oh, hi, Tony.
What the hell? Are you off to the Shield?
Why are you taking a ferry, you big loser?
Steve Edge plays Tony White, the sort of lecherous comedian.
He's a card magician and just spends his time
travelling the country, trying to sleep with as many women as he can.
I'm Tony White. Don't believe the rumours. They're all true.
Except for the duck thing.
I mean, do I actually look like the sort of bloke who'd suck off a duck?
The marvellous Peter Capaldi is Mike Francis,
the, sort of, judge of the magic competition.
This is sick.
This is so sick it might actually make the papers.
He likes to maintain the standards
that he's come to expect from magicians the world over.
He's been terrific. Had his hair sort of bouffed up, and...
Obviously, that's not his whole performance but, you know, it just helps.
He's great. He's very, very funny. He's very, very right wing,
which is great fun to play.
Thank you. Tony White showing you a new flower trick
and also his distinctive ring piece.
Don't worry, right over the kids' heads.
Anyhow...
And Andrea Risborough, playing Dani, who's very funny
as the slightly credulous, Geordie girlfriend of Karl's.
Dani is a really sweet and trusting person.
She's not stupid,
but she can be fairly naive.
So, what would you like?
Come on. You know.
A pint for me, please, and a white wine for the lady.
Amazing. White wine. Wow. Yeah, you got me.
That is exactly what I drink.
White wine, or red wine.
Or a lager.
Andrew, which is unusual, is an incredibly collaborative,
easy-going, intelligent director.
It's very interesting when you work with, essentially, first-time directors.
They're enthusiastic about what you're achieving,
they're incredibly thankful for what you're trying to do.
I'm much more involved with things.
Rather than somebody saying to me, "This is what I'd like to do,"
it's much more like, "Hey, James, how do we achieve this?"
He knows what he wants and he knows when he's got it.
And he's very good at conveying how to give it to him.
-And cut. -Not bad.
We're going to do one last take.
He's just very good at talking to actors, it turns out.
He gives you very detailed notes.
He is more or less at one with the funny bit in every scene
and how to bring that out of you.
He also loves the gags.
Andrew comes from a magic background.
Was, as I'm sure he'll tell you in his interview,
Young Magician of the Year when he was 18.
Have I mentioned that I was the Young Magician of the Year at 18?
Andrew is a walking magic encyclopaedia.
From the ages of 14 to 22, I earned a living as a professional magician,
doing sort of working men's clubs and theatres and tours and hotels.
And I was sort of cocky and, you know,
got people up and took the mickey out of them.
And I even spoke with a Northern accent, and I wasn't even Northern.
It was mental, you know.
"Take a card, put it back. Is it the six of clubs? Thank you very much."
It was ridiculous.
The year I won it, Noel was second. That man there's called Scott Penrose.
Scott is our magic consultant on our movie.
We managed to make the film authentic.
Quite simply, we have a fantastic magic consultant on the film called Scott Penrose,
who is there to make sure that everything we do is good and correct.
So, every trick that you see in the film,
Scott has either built, designed, looked after, taught magicians.
So if the magic isn't very good in the film, it's absolutely Scott's fault.
This looks amazing!
The tricks that you will see in the Magicians movie...
A lot of classic tricks.
The guillotine illusion, where a blade passes through someone's neck.
Or not, as the case may be.
We're going with the guillotine, Harry,
because I want to win, yeah?
I'm not messing about.
A lot of smaller magic as well.
As I said, David is doing the multiplying billiard balls,
which is a classic trick.
I learnt how to make them turn into three and then four.
But that very simple, not very spectacular thing,
the joke of which is that it looks a bit shit,
actually took more practice than all the levitation, guillotining,
sub trunk stuff all put together.
You'll see some dove productions, linking rings.
You'll see some card manipulations.
You'll see Jessica levitated.
It feels very uplifting.
Yeah.
Actually, it's a bit tight round my bum, Harry.
Could you just get a finger in there and give it a waggle?
Under the strap, obviously.
Not in my bum!
Sure, yes, I'll just get my hands in there, under there.
The guillotine illusion is quite a scary prop.
It's designed not to cut anybody's head off,
although, at the same time, it will cut things as well.
Well, as you know, the actors have learnt some tricks.
The movie's peppered with some real magicians.
There's a character in the movie called Wolfgang
who puts out a cigarette on his tongue.
And that is played by a guy called Pat Page.
He's 74, one of the world's greatest magicians.
And Pat sold me my first magic tricks when I was 13.
He came into a magic shop I was working in at the time and bought some tricks,
and I've known him ever since.
He gives me the odd job occasionally for old time's sake, you know.
Nice work, Wolfgang.
It's the kind of trick that no one would ever dare do today.
There's no method to that, apparently. He just takes the pain.
Sick bastard.
People don't know that there are things called magic conventions
where you can go and buy tricks.
So we set up a magic convention in the movie,
and we invited real magic dealers from around the country
to come and set up their real stands and demonstrate their real tricks.
One, one, six, take two.
And background action.
Action!
Linda, Jessica Stevenson's character, is strolling around the convention,
checking out some tricks. She finds the fake turd.
Genuine fake turd based on the 1947 Ted Krueger original design.
It's a classic.
Is it magic?
It's on the borderline, where magic meets novelty.
This whole world, this whole magician's world,
of not-the-best-taste kind of presentation and clothes and all this sort of stuff,
I thought was just a great world to explore.
And also it has this slightly geeky kind of element to it.
I just thought that they caught that perfectly in the script.
It's great to see the very strange and secluded world
of the magicians and the amateur magicians doing their, frankly, terrible tricks.
Quick shake. Turns white.
It is a real community of people who are obsessed with one thing.
And they come apart
as if by magic.
The thing that struck me particularly down there
was that magic, in some ways, is show business
for people without any charisma.
You know, these are people with no natural talent,
but they've found a way to be onstage.
I didn't realise the Magic Circle is actually a place.
They go down... They've got a club there, and they go down to the bar,
and they talk to each other about magic tricks.
-It's not like Stonehenge. -No, it's more of a pub.
Stonehenge, some people believe, is an actual magic circle.
Those people are morons.
One, two, three, four.
We've gone as far as we possibly can with two comedy actors
that aren't magicians.
So we have spent a couple of months training them to do magic,
and they've worked out surprisingly well.
Really, the essence is just getting the persona as magicians
rather than just the successful execution of the trick.
The real challenge was to get them into the mindset of a magician
and acting like them.
It's very funny watching everybody learning how to do the magic
because they all look vaguely nervous.
I mean, it's not exactly like Keanu Reeves,
spending three months to learn karate, or kung-fu, or sword fighting.
But it... Yeah, it is a bit like that.
The trick I have is the Flowers of Love, which is a vanishing bouquet of flowers.
The Flowers of Love.
And much like human love, one minute it's there, but by morning, 'tis gone.
David was given much easier magic tricks to learn than I was,
and so it looks like he picked it up quicker.
I had to learn the rolling-a-coin-across-your-hand thing.
Bend the knuckle, that's a tip, that's the first tip.
And then I spent four weeks practising this.
And the idea is to get the coin to roll gracefully across your knuckles,
pass it under and then transfer it, and it goes round in an even circle.
After four weeks, this is how well I can do it.
The evidence is we were both given some tricks,
I mastered the ones I was given, Rob didn't master the ones he was given.
-All of them. -I honestly gave up.
The people who can do it are freaks.
And then it turns out that most magicians are only good at it
because they practise for hours and years.
-I mean, where's the fun in that? -Yeah, Gandalf doesn't practise.
Oh, my God! You are kidding!
Well, we're here in beautiful Skegness,
looking at the pier, which stops as soon as it gets to the water.
We got to film in the fantastic Nottingham Theatre Royal.
Gorgeous theatre. We did all of the final magic show there.
The theatre world in Nottingham, where we are today,
is amazing and looks brilliant on film.
We got a whole audience of local people
to come in and be the audience, and they were very well-behaved.
I started to get quite badly heckled.
I went out and started chatting to them all.
Nobody else did. I was the only one who fell for it.
Poor bastards had to stay there for about eight hours,
clapping and doing various things they were ordered to do.
It became quite addictive actually, after awhile.
It was really quite fun chatting to everyone.
And I thought I saw Johnny Depp in the audience, but it wasn't him.
It wasn't him.
We are on a lovely beach called Queens Park Beach in Mablethorpe,
on the east coast of England.
Most of the scenes on the beach were fun. It's a nice working environment.
Who wouldn't want to work on a beach most of the time?
I suppose that's the attraction of being in Baywatch.
I'd have to ask the Hoff.
I love the scenes on the beach, where Harry tries to piss on Karl's head.
No, I don't like that.
He's buried up to his neck in sand, on the beach, for some sort of trick.
He's carrying out a Blaine-style stunt.
The Sandathon, or Sandurance, as I think he calls it.
Here's the pitch,
you don't need food.
You are living off your brain.
The first thing that occurred to me was wasps.
And that if I was buried up to my head, there would be wasps around.
That was my first thinking.
"I hope they're going to have some expert swatters."
It turned out to be okay. I was actually in a wooden crate on a stool.
So my head was poking up,
but I was actually sitting down fairly comfortably.
But it wasn't very nice to be in there for very long.
'Cause the wind gets up,
and then you got sand whipping in your face.
And then the sun's boiling you.
Harry, David Mitchell's character,
is furious with him, and comes storming down to the beach.
Dirty tricks! You had to resort to dirty tricks.
Harry?
I come, and shout, and scream at him and threaten to piss on his head.
Urine. How's that? Lovely warm urine, all over your head.
And I didn't even have to get my real knob out.
He did get a fake knob out.
-A huge, stunt, Hollywood knob. -Just to try and put me off.
-'Cause obviously my own penis... -It didn't work.
-It's too funny. It's too funny. -...it's not very filmic.
Harry, look, don't. Just let's talk about this.
Damn! I can't go now!
I think that's a richly comic moment and I enjoyed playing that.
Well, it's funny. Just a funny British film.
The little details and nuances are deeply embedded within the film.
I think what you have in the two central characters is...
Are two characters that you can really invest in.
Hey, Harry!
It's a really warm tale, you know, and it has a great, filmic story.
Everyone's really, kind of, funny.
Thank you.
There's lots of very, very good comic turns in it.
It's just that it's a really good night out.
And that maybe it'll encourage you to learn a card trick.
What are you talking about?
That was a joke. You don't really want to learn card tricks.
It's a story that makes sense, and you are engaged by the characters,
having to laugh with and at them.
Lot of laughs, as well as drama.
And, cut!
Blimey.
Well, I don't think that anyone has ever seen a final quite like that,
and I do not, in any way, mean that in a positive sense.