MICHAEL CARBONARO

I might be 'Candid Camera''s number one fan.

Growing up, I loved magic, I loved acting, I loved comedy. I really didn't know what direction I was going. I was trying a whole bunch of stuff.

I am a hopeless mamma's boy.

I don't want to be 'the magician'; I want to be an innocent bystander along with the magical moment.

I found that if I stack the moments correctly, people will believe in the most outrageous things.

I have heard I look like the guy from 'The Carbonaro Effect.'

I love acting on television and look forward to more roles, for sure. And I also love and need to perform live shows.

I say 'incantation' a lot, when what I really mean 'incarnation.' It's a programmed mistake.

I went to NYU completely with the idea I wanted to be the next David Copperfield.

I'll order anything that has the word 'fig' or 'crusted' in the menu description.

I'm doing everything I can to take the magician out of the equation of magic.

I've always performed magic as a kid.

Magic is like special effects live, and I love to perform, so it sounded like doing magic tricks were a good way to entertain people.

Magic is really performing special effects live.

People are really willing to believe in impossible things, which is really beautiful.

A lot of people have experimented with hidden cameras and magic before. What I do, which I think is different from any other style of prank or hidden camera, is that it's all fun. It's back to that kind of fun that 'Candid Camera' was. It's not mean-spirited at all. It's a joyful kind of play with people.

Alan Funt was the first hidden-camera magician. It was the playful nature of the way he worked that really inspired me. A lot of prank shows and hidden-camera shows can be a little mean-spirited. Funt was never like that.

David Blaine, I think, was the first TV magician to really turn the camera around and make it about the spectator's experience. That's really what magic is all about.

I first started doing hidden-camera segments on 'The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.' He was the coolest guy in the world to work for because he understands the creative process, and he had total trust. And he just let me make up whatever I wanted; I experimented and tried and played. We had a lot of fun over there.

I was certain when I was about 10 years old that I was going to be a special effects artist or a make-up man. I loved that stuff and pursued it for quite some time, actually.

It's very exciting to take magic into a new direction, whereas a lot of times magic comes from a place of sort of ego, like, 'Look what I can do that you can't do.' It kind of comes across that way a lot, and you're always trying to challenge the magician; you're always trying to figure out how the magician is doing it.

My goal is to get people to really believe that the impossible is real, and not that I'm responsible for it. I want them to believe that they're having the most unusual, magical and bizarre days of their lives.

My goal was becoming the next David Copperfield. I learned how to be a performer by emulating him as a kid - his formula of just talking to people onstage, being free to improvise, being charming and witty with a crowd, together with great, beautiful magic.

The goal is to really blur the line. Can you perform a magic trick in a way that someone doesn't think it's a magic trick but is something amazing they haven't seen before? Then they have to wrestle with reality.

There's magic all around us: Our smartphones are magical, 3-D printers are magical. So I feel that as a magician, if I can pull off something that seems real and convincing enough that I can explain why it's happening and have people believe it, it really is fascinating. And funny.