“At one point, Houdini was so broke he tried to sell all of his secrets to a magazine for a nominal number, and they turned him down,” he says. I feel like it’s an interesting facet of the storytelling, but I don’t really like that certain things are revealed because he wouldn’t have wanted to reveal them.”ĭespite Brody’s trepidation about the explanations, he adds that Houdini himself once offered to sell his tricks. You could probably find them online these days.
“But the audience will gain an understanding of how some great illusions worked. And I had issues with this,” Brody admits. “There is an oath not to reveal certain tricks. Along the way, the secrets to his seemingly impossible feats are often revealed to the audience. Those escapes-from straitjackets and freezing rivers and Chinese water-torture contraptions-are faithfully recreated in “Houdini” by Brody, Kristen Connolly as his wife, and Evan Jones as his assistant. Over the course of four hours, viewers follow Houdini from his life as poor immigrant Erik Weisz to the renowned, revered magician who made a fortune by escaping from increasingly terrifying, self-imposed traps. Though physically they’re dissimilar-Houdini was stocky where Brody is lean and wiry-Brody’s transformation into the magician is remarkable. And I think as I got a little older, I became a bit more cynical and I lost that feeling and I found it in acting-miraculously, because it is much more unpredictable.”
I, as a boy, was really infatuated by magic and the concept of illusion and the potential for real magic. “I’ve idolized this man from as early as I can remember,” Brody says. 1 and 2, directed by Uli Edel and starring Adrien Brody as the man who defied death and defined the American dream.Ĭoaxing the Oscar winner to star on a cable miniseries was surprisingly easy.
And to underscore his continued relevance, History premieres its two-part miniseries Sept. More than a century after his heyday, Houdini remains a household name where his rivals have disappeared. As the years pass, magicians who once wowed thousands fall by the wayside as technology relentlessly advances, rendering their sleights of hand obsolete.
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