A moment with Michael Carbonaro about The Carbonaro Effect: Exclusive interview
By Callum Gunn
Discussing what lies ahead for in The Carbonaro Effect, how things became to be and what goes on behind the scenes.
Ahead of the season 4 premiere of The Carbonaro Effect on truTV, Hidden Remote had the wonderful opportunity to have a chat with Michael Carbonaro himself. Find out what is coming up in the new season, how The Carbonaro effect came to be, and who Michael would like to try an effect on most.
In The Carbonaro Effect, Michael puts his comedy, magic and improv talents to the tests by performing baffling, jaw-dropping effects right in front of an unsuspecting member of the public. Their reactions are caught on hidden camera, which is quite honestly the best part. The effects are good, but the reactions are priceless.
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Hidden Remote: How are you doing for Season 4? Are you ready for it?
Michael Carbonaro: Yes, we’ve finished shooting and we’re getting ready for it premiering this Thursday (May 17).
HR: I’ve seen a lot of work going into it. I’ve seen the first, “The Doctors Office,” promo.
MC: Yeah, you saw that on my profile?
HR: Yeah, I was watching it while preparing for this. I just showed my daughter it and she freaked out when your eye came out.
MC: Yeah, so did my mom when she saw it.
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HR: I’m not surprised. I’m looking forward to it. It’s going to be good.
MC: Yeah, the episodes are looking awesome. We really pushed far and we’ve got some spectacular tricks that range from big Steven Spielberg out-of-this-world Alien encounters, all the way down to tiny little tricks, like flattening hamburgers down in little discs to put in your pocket to eat later. So it runs from little, insane to big and cinematic.
HR: This was one of the things I was wondering. All the ideas you come up with. How do you come up with them? Is it just yourself or do you have a whole team that’s working together?
MC: I’ve got the most incredible magicians and the best magic team I could. I’ve got everyone in the world who’s amazing working for the show and they all love the show. And I’m so grateful because there’s a lot of magicians behind it. I have a rock solid team of five people who are there to help create the tricks from the beginning to when we’re shooting them. They’re my little secret weapons.
HR: It’s just you on the camera but a lot going on in the background then?
MC: Yes, there is. A lot of secrets. A lot of things not seen.
It’s like we’re filming a special effects show, but we have to hide all our tricks not just from the cameras but from the person who is going to be in that room. Everything has to be really realistic; the illusion of a real moment to get someone in the room and make everyone believe it’s an ordinary, empty room and there aren’t four or six cameras hiding at any time.
HR: Ok but how do you get some of these people in? Do you wait for someone to come in? Or do you convince them to come to you in some way?
MC: It depends on where we’re shooting. If I’m in a Pet Boys or a home store, we just wait for them to come on in. That’s the best; when you find someone in the middle of an ordinary day and you just stop and interrupt that and show them something. That gets us probably the best reactions we ever get.
Other ways, we might have friends who have friends who don’t know the show. We get them to bring them say into an ice cream parlor where I may be seated at the bar and we entice people in that way and secretly set them up for something unusual to happen.
HR: Curious to see if they would still be friends after that. I’m sure they saw the funny side of it. Is there anyone who’s come in who has recognized you before it’s started?
MC: Absolutely! People give themselves away. It’s funny how I’ll see it in their faces as they’re walking towards me. I’ll see they know me and I’m like ‘uh oh. This person knows who I am.’
Or we’ve had someone who, after I’ve shown them the trick, they’ve been like: ‘I’ve seen that show. That’s you! I can’t believe I’m on this! I can’t believe I just fell for the show I know.’
HR: Brilliant. Going back a little bit. The locations. How do you get them? Are the people who own them in on it themselves?
MC: Of course! Like, we were in Chicago last season (we’re in it again this season). Chicago is awesome to us with such awesome locations. We just pick ‘em out. There’s this little French market and we’ll go talk to the owner and show them clips of the show. Most of the time they’ll start smiling and laughing and say they’ll love to have us.
HR: Some people would describe The Carbonaro Effect as a hidden camera, practical joke, magic reality show. Now while we have separate shows like that, a magic show, a hidden camera show, etc. This is all of that combined with your own unique spin on it. What inspired you to do this?
MC: I’ve been inspired since candid camera. What that first started, it was just reactions to things like bowling and it was just entertaining to watch their reactions when someone missed. At its core, it is entertaining to watch somebody candidly, who doesn’t know they’re being filmed, because it’s so honest. And then candid camera got into some pranks in their day where it was magical, quite Carbonaro Effect, but they’d share how they did it.
They had a woman drive a car into a gas station and say that there was a weird noise in it. When they opened it there was no motor and all the guys in the shop are baffled. All they did was pushed her down the hill and make it look like she was driving. They were all making those faces that you see in The Carbonaro Effect. They just can’t understand how something so strange can happen and I think that’s what we get hooked on when we watch the show.
HR: Thinking back to the very first episode of The Carbonaro Effect “Got the Bug Out.” What was going through your head at the time? Did you think The Carbonaro Effect would go on this long?
MC: No, I didn’t! I thought we’d maybe make 8 episodes of hidden camera magic television and that would be it. I had no idea we’d go into four seasons and we’re past 80-some odd episodes already. I can’t believe it.
To answer your question, that anxiety, the ‘oh my God, I don’t know if I can pull this off’ in that very first episode with the bug in the phone, it’s the same feeling I have now. Not knowing if it’s going to work, to pull it off, if we’ll get a good reaction. Just the other day, our last shooting day we were in a reptile show and I did this cool bit with a laser beam at a rat. I take this one rat and I use the beam to split him into four and split the four into eight and I’m explaining that I do this in our reptile store because it’s more humane for the snakes that need to eat rats. It’s more humane to clone them instead of raising them. And this guy was freaking out.
It ended up being awesome and I’m talking now about it with such excitement but that feeling before I was going to do it I was thinking: ‘no one is going to believe this. What if people think I’m crazy? What if people don’t believe this? What if it won’t work?’ And you just jump out there and do it. It just keeps working.
You know what, I tell you why it keeps working. It’s not just me. It’s every episode and every single trick — it’s not even the trick. You always get me and a trick – it’s always a new person, a new character, a new person on the show to watch and see how they react. It’s endlessly fascinating.
HR: I’d agree with that. You’re watching the person more than yourself. You’re watching them and how they’ll react. For example, the Season 4 promo, seeing you pull your eye. The reaction you got was just amazing. I didn’t know if she was going to run away or take the eye from you.
MC: That’s another one of those encounters where we had to put someone…she was a respectable receptionist, which shows just how crazy we can make her go.
HR: In terms of the effects, do you have a favorite one? Is there one that stands out for you?
MC: There’s one that’s always my standout effect. It took place in a hardware store and it was called “The Builder Beetles.” It was these tiny little real beetles in a glass jar that I dumped out onto the counter and covered them up with a coffee can and left them with a pile of toothpicks. When I left them in the dark, you could hear them moving under there. When I lifted it up, the beetles—the real beetles—right there in the hardware store assembled a sculpture that was like a mini Eiffel Tower. I explained that these beetles naturally do this in the way a spider builds its web. And this man, just an everyday guy going into the hardware store to pick up some nuts and bolts or whatever, he just turned into a seven-year-old child. His eyes lit up and his mouth dropped and he was in this total suspended disbelief and to me, that was the ultimate trick.
It was literally like the flea circus, like a ‘step right up, believe it or not,’ and that one really stands out for the heart of the show. There’s something unbelievable about watching a real person buy into it.
HR: Amazing. Have there been any effects that you have wanted to do, but for one reason or another couldn’t?
MC: Well, this season we got to pull a lot of that off. Now that we’ve been going so long, there are a lot of effects that we’d talked about that now we’re able to do it. This season we pulled off an effect we’ve been working on for a really long time, where a human being freezes components completely into a solid block of ice.
We set it up as if it was one of those cryotherapy tanks like people are going in there like they do tanning beds? There are outrageous sports people and people with arthritis have liquid nitrogen freeze your body a little. Well, we posted it as something went wrong with one of those machines and a person’s body turned into a solid block of ice. You could see right through them. It’s an incredible illusion.
We pulled it off so well that there was literally nothing to not believe. So when you’re looking at someone and you can see right through their body and you can touch and put your hands behind it, when we pull that sort of illusion off with the devices of magic that we have, there’s nothing to not believe.
HR: It sounds like you’ve gone all-out for this season.
MC: Yeah, we have aliens landing, we have ghosts in broad daylight, we have haunted orchestras. It’s a really whack season.
HR: I’m looking forward to that. So, I’ve only got one question left.
MC: Awesome.
HR: Is there anyone you would like to perform an effect on if you could pick a person?
MC:You know who I would like to…I shouldn’t say it really, but I’m going to anyway…I really want to get my mom.
HR: Would she honestly fall for it since she knows you so well?
MC: I don’t know. That would be a big challenge. Maybe the second half of season 4 we’ll go for it.
HR: Thank you, Michael, it’s been a pleasure.
Next: A moment with truTV's Adam Conover
The Carbonaro Effect will premiere its season 4 episode on Thursday, May 17 at 10/9c on truTV.