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Join today<\/a><\/p>\n \n Already a member? It would be silly to suggest that Derren Brown<\/a> made magic cool. No one has ever really managed to do this, and, to a large extent, I\u2019m not sure the magic world even has any interest in being cool. It is an art form rooted in theatricality, and hard, nerdy graft: there\u2019s nothing chic about it. But Brown has probably come as close as anyone when it comes to making magic \u2013 \u201cor whatever it is that I do\u201d, he hedges, mostly describing himself as an illusionist \u2013 into a snappy, provocative mainstream pursuit.<\/p>\n During his ascent in the 2000s, Brown took the staid top-hatted conventions of magic and sawed them in half. His big breakthrough came in 2003, when he played \u2013 or seemed to play \u2013 a game of Russian roulette on live TV. In various other specials, he used elaborate psychological methods to compel strangers into believing that he was the messiah reborn, into robbing a security van in broad daylight, into believing in an ongoing zombie apocalypse, and, in one instance, into an attempt to assassinate Stephen Fry. <\/p>\n \u201cI came into TV as what they laughably called \u2018talent\u2019,\u201d says Brown, speaking to me from his home over a video call. A jobbing stage performer at the time, Brown was recommended to Channel 4 by the comedian\/magician Jerry Sadowitz<\/a>, when producers wanted a mind-reader to front a planned show called Mind Control. \u201cI didn\u2019t know anything about TV,\u201d he recalls, \u201cand so those first few years were me doing the sort of stuff I might do live anyway. Then, as time went on, this shift happened \u2013 making it more about other people, those kind of Truman Show<\/a> setups where someone\u2019s going through some nightmare they don\u2019t realise they\u2019re part of. That\u2019s where the drama is.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown sits in his house, his background automatically blurred. (As illusions go, it\u2019s not one of his more ornate efforts.) He is now 55, but looks a few years younger: the top of his head is shaved, and he boasts a short, stubbly beard, replacing the arcane soul-patch goatee that was once his go-to look. I\u2019ve asked about Brown\u2019s TV work in part because he\u2019s keeping schtum on the specifics of what we\u2019re nominally here to talk about: his latest stage show, Only Human. The show, which started touring last year and now resumes with a four-month residency at London\u2019s Apollo Theatre, is Brown\u2019s first since 2021, and concerns the matter of \u201cbeing human\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s about how we need to try and predict, and control our lives,\u201d he says. \u201cHow we navigate that in an uncertain world. I would hope people leave with a greater sense of wonder about themselves and, and the world around them.\u201d Every night, he swears the audience to secrecy when it comes to the content of the show. It\u2019s an embargo they opt to obey.<\/p>\n Mostly, that is. The age of the internet has brought novel obstacles for magicians, with entire Reddit forums devoted to unpacking and de-mystifying the details of any popular illusion. The notion of an illusion comprehensively \u201cfooling\u201d an audience seems almost impossible now; the internet has made us, as it were, fool-proof. \u201cBut I don\u2019t really know if that\u2019s relevant, if you\u2019re doing a good job,\u201d says Brown. \u201cThere was a genuine technological watershed moment for magicians, I think, once people could start videotaping TV shows, and they could pause, and rewind. That was a game changer. And on the internet, there is that wisdom-of-crowds thing, where people can all get together and analyse it between them.\u201d<\/p>\n When it comes to those online autopsies, Brown says he avoids even looking at them. \u201cI\u2019m sure people arrive at conclusions that are maybe right, or half-right or just plain wrong. I just never go there,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause it\u2019s depressing and frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n I think if you become a big name overnight, it can be horrendously disorienting and destructive<\/p>\n Derren Brown<\/p>\n To some degree, the problem is more philosophical than practical. We live lives inundated not just with information, but spurious information; in the age of AI, distrusting the reality of what you are being shown has become a part of everyday life. When it comes to illusionism, there is, I suppose, simply so much more disbelief to suspend. \u201cIt feels, in our modern world, that wonder would come to mean less,\u201d says Brown. \u201cBut the reality is that access to this information just exacerbates our need for wonder. <\/p>\n \u201cThe point of things like wonder and mystery is that they exist outside of what is ordinary. If you are fooled by a trick, you are being shown that your story \u2013 your understanding of what was going on \u2013 doesn\u2019t quite match up to reality. And that is, of course, a very helpful lesson in navigating life, even though magic itself is such a sort of childish thing. At the heart of it, it says something valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown gives the impression of thinking deeply about what he does, a quality that tends to shine through in his work. A Derren Brown trick is seldom just an illusion, but an illusion that\u2019s trying to communicate something larger. \u201cI think we have a bad relationship to mystery, in the West,\u201d he continues. \u201cWe don\u2019t live it; it\u2019s not part of life. We take it and put it into places where it feels a lot less mysterious.\u201d It\u2019s a culture that manifests, he says, in our default preference for \u201csecular stage magic\u201d over more traditional woo-woo mysticism.<\/p>\n \u201cWe put [our sense of mystery] in the way we talk about the unconscious, or the way we talk quantum physics,\u201d Brown says. \u201cWe package it up and put it in these bottomless wells where we don\u2019t have to think about it. But we\u2019re still going to need to find it somewhere. We all want to. People like me become one way of doing that. Or you might look for that in religion. Or, in money and fame, which is a bad place \u2013 it doesn\u2019t supply it. There\u2019s a human urge to transcend ordinary life. If we don\u2019t take it seriously then we put it in all the wrong places.\u201d<\/p>\n What of Brown\u2019s own relationship with fame? The illusionist seems unusually well-adjusted for someone of his celebrity. Interviews often mention how nice he is off-camera, disrobed of his slick, confident, faintly austere stage persona. And to be fair, this seems genuinely accurate \u2013 no illusion required.<\/p>\n Born in Croydon and raised in nearby Purley, Brown benefited, perhaps, from the gradualness of fame\u2019s arrival: before Russian Roulette set him on his way to becoming a household name, he had been working for three years on the significantly less-watched Mind Control, after years in the Nineties as a close-up magician in bars and restaurants. <\/p>\n \u201cI was in a very small pond for a long time \u2013 there weren\u2019t many people doing the sort of thing I do, back when I started doing it. I got well known slowly \u2013 slow enough to keep up with and climatise to the weirdness that was coming through,\u201d he says. \u201cI think if you become a big name overnight, it can be horrendously disorienting and destructive, particularly if you\u2019re young. And I wasn\u2019t that young. I was 30, but if you\u2019re young young, that\u2019s just cruel.<\/p>\n \u201cI am,\u201d Brown adds, \u201cblessed with a complete lack of ambition, and that really helped. I never wanted to \u2018crack America\u2019. All I\u2019m driven by is whether it\u2019s a fun thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown has always been relatively circumspect when it comes to discussing his personal life in public. In 2007, he came out as gay. His career in magic partly played into \u201cthe classic cliche among people of my generation\u2026 of the gay man being a fashionista, or an interior designer, or a hairdresser, or an actor: they\u2019re all about these dazzling surfaces\u201d. When he was younger and in the closet, the dazzle and distraction of illusionism was a way of channeling his own insecurities about his sexuality \u2013 \u201cbut I think I\u2019ve worked that stuff through, as much as I can\u201d, he says. \u201cI don\u2019t feel it\u2019s a driving force with the shows [anymore]. <\/p>\n \u201cI’m much more interested now in a different question,\u201d he continues \u2013 how to communicate something honest and worthwhile via the \u201cessentially dishonest\u201d medium of magic. \u201cAs opposed to: How do I deflect? How do I look cool? How do I circumnavigate all the things that are uncomfortable in my life? I don\u2019t think that anymore,\u201d he says. \u201cSo that\u2019s just happened as I’ve grown up.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown is, he adds, \u201cquite an avoidant sort of person. I avoid things that look like they\u2019re going to feel stressful. I don\u2019t do very much. You never see me on things like chat shows, or panel shows. And it\u2019s partly because I like to be right in the middle of my comfort zone. Plus, I like the fact that I\u2019m not oversaturated on TV and I\u2019m not in everyone’s faces all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n At some point soon, Brown will nonetheless be back on television, with a new series called Incognito. The series will feature a group of people tasked with uncovering each others\u2019 identities, while trying to keep their own identity private. Channel 4 is billing it as \u201ca mischievous psychological experiment\u201d. Very Derren Brown, in other words.<\/p>\n \u2018Only Human\u2019 is at London\u2019s Apollo Theatre from Saturday 10 October 2026 until Saturday 30 January 2027<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? 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\n Log in<\/a>\n <\/p>\n![\"Derren](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/158_Derren-Brown_Pamela-Raith-Photography.jpg\")
Derren Brown onstage in \u2018Only Human\u2019 (Pamela Raith Photography)<\/p>\n![\"Derren](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/062_Derren-Brown_Pamela-Raith-Photography.jpeg\")
Derren Brown and an audience member during a performance of \u2018Only Human\u2019 (Pamela Raith Photography)<\/p>\n![\"Derren](\"https:\/\/cdn.ex.co\/transformations-account\/production\/99589e92-e6b5-4a6b-8db4-bb0120ace3e1\/6e006100-3500-4600-a200-570042004f00\/thumbnail-720.webp\")
Derren Brown gives woman eyesight during ‘Mircales’ performance<\/p>\n