In 2014, he won Season 9 of America’s Got Talent. In August 2015, he debuted his headline show, Mat Franco – Magic Reinvented Nightly, at the eponymous theater, and he’s been a smash hit since. What’s the secret of Mat’s success? What’s his unique approach to magic?
The night I attended the show, videographer Dan Waynick kept jumping off his seat, shouting an astonished ‘WHAT???’ In the green room, where we tape the interview, Mat looks even younger than he looks on stage. A little less ebullient, no less fun and charismatic.
Playgirl • January 2026.
Mat, tell us about your journey from Rhode Island to the Mat Franco theater and your historic Las Vegas residency. (10+ years)
It’s sort of hard to wrap my head around it. I’m just a kid from Rhode Island that saw magic on TV, fell in love with it and from that moment on wanted to be in show business. I had a laser-sharp focus to follow that dream and life now is like this pinch-me-moment of wow, I really get to do this –and it’s a ball. I’m having the time of my life.
You are the first magician to win America’s Got Talent, paving the way for many others to follow. Do you watch the show on TV?
The theme song still gives me anxiety. I know all too well what those contestants are going through, like I remember literally not being able to sleep, waiting to find out if this journey is over or if you’re going to get voted through the next round. I had auditioned as a teenager for season 1, when it first came out, and thank God I never got a call back because even at 25 it’s a bit of a psychological torture to deal with that sort of pressure, being live on TV in front of millions of people, week after week, and having to outdo yourself with a panel of celebrity judges (…) so it’s very nerve wracking.
The Strip is home to many magic shows. Living legends like Copperfield and Penn & Teller. And younger talents, like your AGT successor Shin Lim. Is there a sense of camaraderie among you all? Do you hang out with each other?
Yes, I will see Shin tomorrow, we’re working together on something which is super fun. People think there is this competitiveness. They think of a movie like Prestige, where you have Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale going at each other and sabotaging each other’s shows. In real life, magic is so much more of a community, you know. Penn and I would get together and do coffee and talk music. If I have an idea, I’ll run it by Teller and say hey, what do you think of this? It’s great to have a community of magicians, and not just here in Vegas, where you can literally pick up the phone and say, hey I’m working on this thing and I know you’re just the person to help, what do you think? I have so many friends in different parts of the world where English is not their first language, so we have trouble communicating verbally, yet we feel like we’ve known each other even longer than we have, because we have this common interest that bonds us together. It’s such an awesome community.
Speaking of legends, I remember Siegfried and Roy at The Mirage in the 90s. They left quite an impression on me. Who left an impression on you in your formative years?
Siegfried and Roy for sure. I mean, they were Cirque du Soleil before Cirque du Soleil, which is awesome. I saw their show twice, once when I was around 12. I passed on Disney World when I had the opportunity to save up money. I said [to my parents], can we please go to Las Vegas? One of the reasons was because I wanted to study magic from a magician I had seen on TV, Jeff McBride, so that was the impetus for coming here. And on that same trip we saw Siegfried and Roy and Lance Burton who had TV specials on NBC that I had grown up watching. Penn & Teller were an influence and David Copperfield. I was influenced a lot by comedy magicians which bleeds its way into my work, for sure. Bill Malone was a big influence. I saw him on NBC’s World’s Greatest Magic as well. There are names like Siegfried and Roy that everyone knows and then there are magicians that might be lesser known to the general public but are industry-famous because of what they’ve brought to the art form.
“Magic Reinvented Nightly.” Let’s dissect your fresh take on magic: What is magic all about, according to Mat Franco?
Having fun. It has nothing to do with fooling people, it has everything to do with storytelling and bringing people on a journey where they can have fun. It’s a night out, it could be a date night, it could be a family night, it could be a Bachelor or Bachelorette party, which we have tons of. It’s basically everyone kind of coming together in one place at the same time and experiencing magic. For me ‘magic reinvented nightly’ is about the fact that I’m doing so much crowd work and so much audience interaction there’s a level of improvisation that keeps it fresh for the crew and keeps everybody laughing. Because, if we’re not laughing and having fun, it’s hard for anyone else to do that.
Yes, all reviews online agree on these components of your shows: humor, audience engagement and a fast, energetic pace. I would add the stunning production values.
We’ve just recently revamped the show, so it’s a brand-new production design. It’s kind of like when a musician goes on tour, they might play some of the same songs because they have hit songs. We have hits too, but we dress them up. We want the show to have concert-grade production values and so we’re constantly revamping it and keeping it… futuristic. I always wanted it to feel modern and slick: One of the things magic has traditionally suffered from, at times, is it can feel dated, so I’m always really conscious of it feeling modern and slick. Then there’s the interactive experience, the crowd work element –which you cannot phone in: I’m always having fun with the audience. That’s what I’m there for: Fun is the keyword.
How do you imagine your own brand of magic evolve in the next several years and what’s the future of magic shows at large?
After decades of doing magic and ten years of doing it at the Mat Franco theater, I sort of carved this style of magic that I feel comfortable in. Not to say I can’t continue to grow, but I’d like to be able to produce magic that deals in character, because my character on stage is just a more outgoing version of me. So, I like to keep all of the stories I’m sharing sort of authentic to myself.
As to the future of magic, I hope it continues to evolve with the times. I love seeing more and more women involved. We’re seeing this boom of women performing magic like we saw in the 80s with more women doing stand-up comedy. We’re also seeing a shift in scale. You mentioned Siegfried and Roy and for a long time all of the Vegas magic shows were an imitation of the Siegfried and Roy scale. And I think that’s why in 2015, when I showed up here with a deck of cards, people were like, really? This kid’s going to do 90 minutes on stage with just a sleight of hand, how’s that gonna work? I mean there were a lot of skeptics.
You said more women are getting involved in magic. Why was it mostly men? From my perspective, it still looks male-dominated today: Jen Kramer is the only woman among the many magic shows in Vegas currently headlined by men.
I’m not sure why it was a boys’ club. If you read magic books, so many of the methods and technologies were written by men for men, even down to the clothes that you’re wearing. One of the TV shows people are familiar with is Penn & Teller: Fool Us and gosh they have tons of female magicians on the show. I just did a video with my friend Solange Kardinaly: she’s the number one quick change act in the world, but she’s also proficient in sleight of hand manipulation and not just prop magic but stuff that takes real skill and dedication and she’s been a student of the art since she was really young. So many amazing female magicians out there, things are changing.
Let’s talk about the women in your life: Your grandma, your wife and your baby daughter.
I talk about my grandma in the show because she was such a cheerleader for me, my biggest support. My parents both worked, but grandma was around to watch me do tricks and she would willfully sit and clap and watch. I’ll give you an abbreviated version of the story I tell during the show: [when I was a kid] I saw a magician on TV and he was just pulling these cards out of thin air, it was like the coolest thing I’ve ever seen and I asked grandma how does he do it? And she said very confidently –and she meant it: ‘There’s a black curtain behind him, I’ll bet they cut a small slit in the curtain and there’s an assistant behind the curtain, pushing the cards through the slit.’ I was really young, so that all sounded reasonable. Next thing you know, we’re in her living room hanging up this big piece of fabric: I was so excited, I called my grandpa in the room and I said: ‘prepare to be amazed.’ And I stood there proudly showing my hand empty. Grandma slips the cards through the curtain and I pull them out. Grandpa pretended to be amazed, as if he had no idea why there was this big piece of fabric, hanging in his living room –not to mention, all of a sudden he couldn’t find grandma. That is what it was like sleeping over grandma’s house.
Evalina, my daughter has just been here for six months. What an amazing thing to bring a life into the world. It’s all new to me, my son Americo is 2. Motherhood is still something that my wife and I are trying to understand… it’s the type of thing where you say to each other, wow I can’t believe we made them! Yeah, that’s really our best trick ever. Tianna and I met when I was around 21. She’s also from Rhode Island, we met in school and when everything sort of happened she said well, if you’re moving cross country, I’m going to come with you. She’s really been along for the ride, I mean she’s been there since I was living out of my car traveling around the country, performing on college campuses. She was along for that entire ride from the beginning. I’m very, very thankful for that. [As we talk, Tianna shows up with daughter Evalina and son Americo.]
Let me read this comment on Reddit: “First of all he’s so dang cute.” We can’t agree more. How much of your success is indeed your youthful energy?
I’ve seen similar comments on YouTube. “I like his human golden retriever vibes.” That one in particular stuck with me, I kind of get it, you know. Magic has nothing to do with the tricks; it has everything to do with personality, with being who you are. I mean, if you don’t have likability you don’t have any act at all! It doesn’t matter to me if you’re doing stand-up, magic, music… all of it is self-expression to me. I think I’m doing exactly what a movie writer is doing, what a comedian is doing, what a songwriter’s doing. It’s all a form of self-expression and that’s what I’m leaving on stage. It has nothing to do with playing cards, nothing to do with the coin that vanished or the phone that I borrowed from you that disappeared. It has everything to do with what we’re doing together: Magic just happens to be my vehicle, what came naturally to me. Of course, the magic needs to be good but that that’s par for the course in a Las Vegas show. What separates it from everything else is YOU, it’s what you bring to it.
You have a very successful channel on YouTube.
And I don’t even post!
That’s the question: How do you shift your focus when filming content for social media as opposed to doing a live show?
In many ways they have almost nothing in common: Performing live and performing for the camera are two entirely different beasts and I really enjoy both. When performing live, the credibility is already there; everyone knows there’s no funny business going on, you’re all in the room together experiencing it, so you don’t have to waste any time proving that what they’re seeing is real. When producing magic for television or social media you have to pay attention to different things. For example, certain things need to be all in one shot in order for them to have credibility or believability. I use different styles of magic for camera that are especially YouTube-proof: in other words, on YouTube people will watch [everything] over and over again, frame by frame. So, I have created lots of magic that’s completely YouTube-proof, where it doesn’t matter if you go back and forth, frame by frame. You’re still not going to know what happened, the mystery stays alive. Lance Burton once said to me, ‘TV magic a monkey can do it’ –and this is coming from a guy who did a lot of TV magic. Because you have multiple chances to get it right. But in front of a live audience, you really have to prove yourself; you have to engage them from the front row all the way to the back of the room and that’s an entirely different skill set.
Watch the backstage video, exclusively on PLAYGIRL+
