November 10, 2022 • 13 mins
Victoria Henley chats with international magic superstar, Reza (as seen on Penn and Teller’s Fool Us, Duck Dynasty, and many other television shows/broadcasts) about the origins of his career, what life is really like during his world tours, advice for up and coming magicians, as well as the Legacy he hopes to leave through his magic and illusions.
(This interview took place on location at Branson’s Famous Theatre at his resident show in Branson, MO)
(This interview took place on location at Branson’s Famous Theatre at his resident show in Branson, MO)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
This is the FCB Podcast Network.This is Backstage Pass with Victoria Henley.
(00:21):
Hi everyone, and welcome into anotherepisode of Backstage Pass. It's Victoria here
and I am sitting backstage with theMan, the Myth, the legend himself,
international magic superstar Za Raza. Howare you? Wow? Well,
thank you so much. I'm great, good good so Za. You travel
the world doing your show, doingyour magic. You are truly an international
(00:41):
superstar, huge fan base. Butlet's take it back to the very beginning.
When did you know that you wantedthis to be your life? At
the age of six was the firstdefining moment. I got a chance to
see magic up close. The magiciancame to my elementary school and it was
it was just this chance meeting.I raised my hand and got up on
(01:02):
stage. I have to help withthe trick and next thing I knew,
I was asking for a magic hitfor my birthday and the rest is history.
So it was just the product ofvery supportive parents and this crazy dream
at an early age. That's incredible. Now you have a huge fan base.
What I love about your fan base. You see all ages, you
(01:22):
see grandparents, you see little kids, college age kids. What do you
do to really pull in that widerange of people. I mean, we
try and make the show for everybody, because we'll have people that come to
the show, but also they're goingto bring people along with them that may
or may not want to come seea magic show, you know, And
(01:44):
my goal is to make the showwhen that person over who didn't want to
come and see the show in thefirst place. So I kind of look
out and I scanned the audience andI know, Okay, that's a husband
that the wife wanted to come tothe show. This isn't his vibe.
He doesn't think it is. Andso I kind of watch him throughout the
show, and I watched his bodylanguage shift, and I always trying to
focus on one person. And bythe end of it, if they're laughing
(02:07):
and standing up, you know,standing ovation, sometimes they're the ones that
that that lead it. Just becausethey didn't expect to like it, they
did. And there's there's so manydifferent elements. You know. The music,
Um it's it's hard hitting, youknow, concert type music. We've
got, uh there's a lot ofrock, there's modern things, but there's
also some throwbacks as well. Sopeople sometimes identify with the music and the
(02:30):
lights and all the production will sometimesdraw people in, and the magic itself
is as Court's relatable. I don'twant to just do magic with these weird
objects that you see typically an illusionshow, sparkly boxes and these weird you
know, top hat and cape andall this sort of thing. It's not
(02:52):
always that, but you know,if you picture a magician, it's this
guy pulling a rab out of ahat. And so what I've done is
I've just taken these age old oldtricks and I've reinvented them with ordinary objects.
Yeah, power tools, spray paint, you know, oil, cookie,
helicopter, motorcycle, and so againit brings in a wide demographic because
(03:15):
all of these things that I'm usingare things that you have in your garage,
you see in your everyday live andall of a sudden, this isn't
just a distant magic show. Thisis a relatable experience. Absolutely. What
I love about your show it's arock concert meets a magic show. I
mean, there's so much going on, but then when you really look at
its score, you've got the closeup you know, sleight of hand.
(03:35):
Who is your number one inspiration ormaybe more than one that you're like,
yeah, this person really inspires me. I Mean, someone I've always respected
is David Blaine. I grew upwatching him on TV, and the more
that I learned about him and spendtime with his team, he really cares
about the art form and he'll he'llstudy something or trained for a year just
(03:57):
to be able to do one particularstunt their trick. Yeah, there's just
a lot that I've respected about him, and he's inspired me and pushed me.
So obviously there's there's many more,but he would be the first person
that would come to mind, ofcourse. So you yourself, just as
Raisa, have a huge name,and I'm sure you get recognized out and
about, but you've also had appearanceson Duck Dynasty, I mean, A
(04:18):
and e tons of reality shows andtelevision shows. What is the number one
of those that people really recognize youfrom? Penn and Teller fool Us.
For some reason, I think it'sit was an iconic I mean, their
iconic performers they spend that's the birdsin the background. By the way,
I'm gonna have my editor keep thatin because I love it. Let's keep
(04:43):
going, Let's keep you know,of course, let's keep it okay for
those of you who don't know whatI love about like live behind the scenes
interviews, we had to pull therabbits out for we have rabbits. Raisa
works with a monkey. There's amouse literally right behind us and birds and
I think that's awesome. So yeah, you've left a few out too.
Um yeah, well yeah, typicallythat would be a recut. We'll take
(05:05):
that again. But hey, we'regonna keep it real. We'll see,
We'll keep it real, okay.Um, yeah, I mean so,
if you're to name one show,I think I mean Duck Dynasty. You
mentioned that that spand I think elevenseasons is always on a rerun and I
had to opportunity be a part ofthe final season and so um, those
(05:26):
re air more than others. Butsomething about Penn and Teller Fulos. I
think there's been a lot of magicshows over the course of time, but
that one just does it does itdifferently, the fact that you're trying to
fool the smartest magicians, and thatthey kind of divulge little pieces in code,
but you have to listen carefully tofigure out what they're saying. There's
(05:48):
just there's different elements and it.Uh, there's just more depth of that
show. So I think, youknow, the number one show probably would
be that one. Um, butthere's other things as well that people will
come to the show and not realizethat they that they saw that before,
and then when they see you dothe trick, they're like, oh,
you're that guy too. And yeah, it's a lot of different things.
(06:08):
But some of the magic in theshow is huge and grand scale. Like
I have this big drill that Iconcrete augur like a twenty foot drill,
drill through a person, lift themup. I passed someone through the spinning
blades of a jet engine. Imake a helicopter repair. But then after
all of that, someone will sometimessay it was the oreo that impressed me,
(06:30):
a little thing with an oreo thatI've done on a bunch of TV
shows. And again, I thinkthat just comes down to the relatability factor
of it doesn't always have to bethe most massive piece of equipment to strike
a nerve. Yeah, of course, speaking of a grand scale production,
I mean this is a huge production. You are hard pressed to find a
bigger magic show than this. Andyou guys go on the road when you're
(06:50):
not here in Branson. We're goingto post the show schedules and how you
can follow along on social media.But I imagine the logistics must be crazy
of taking the show on the road, walk us through a day in the
life of Raiza touring. What isit like? It is? It's a
little insane. So we just gotback in off of for East Coast dates.
We ended that in New York andso I had a show here last
(07:14):
Thursday night and then flew into Ithink Connecticut, and we did four dates.
But I literally had a show hereat eight o'clock and by noon we
were sound checking with the same showacross the country. And the way that
we do that is we have aduplicate of every piece of equipment that we
own. So all the illusions,the lighting, the costuming, anything big,
(07:38):
too small, it's duplicate. Wehave two of them, and so
one can be either a container headingacross the ocean somewhere, could be on
a semi drive me across the country. Allows us to do a show in
one location one night and then flyacross the country and do it again somewhere
else with a you know, ahuge production. Interesting, So what do
(08:01):
you think is the biggest misconception aboutwhat you do. I mean, I
think people come into a magic showexpecting to see what they've seen before,
and I want to show them somethingbrand new and different. And so I
want to be a magic show forpeople that like magic, and I want
to be a magic show for peoplewho hate magic. I love that.
(08:22):
Yeah, I mean to boil itdown, that's my goal. Awesome,
Well, Raisa, this was somuch fun, kind of getting to look
behind the magic. And thank youas always for joining us. We're going
to be right back with Raza rightafter the short break. These days,
it seems like everybody's talking, butno one is actually listening to the things
(08:43):
they're saying. Critical thinking isn't dead, but it's definitely low on oxygen.
Join me Kira Davis on Jeff Listento yourself every week as we reason through
issues big and small, critique ourown ideas, and learn to draw our
talking points all the way out totheir logical conclude. Subscribe to Just Listen
to Yourself with Kia Davis, anFCB radio podcast on Apple, on Spotify,
(09:05):
iHeart, or wherever you get yourpodcasts. This is Backstage Pass with
Victoria Henley. Welcome back into backstagepass everyone. It's Victoria Henley here at
the beautiful Branson Famous Theater with noneother than Raiza. So we've been talking
about his background in magic, allof that good stuff. But I'm sure
(09:26):
you want to know where you cansee Raza. Well, you can see
him in Branson, that's his residentshow, but he travels all over the
US, all over the world.Raza. How can we follow along?
Well, official website which hows allthe tour dates is rais alive dot com
or zyalive dot com. And thenfollow me. I'm most active on Instagram
(09:46):
and Facebook, but you know allof the above. I'll pop on Snapchat
and Twitter once in a while aswell, but I put the most content
on on those and TikTok as well. But they hit the tour dates rais
dot com. It's the best place. Absolutely, We're gonna have to see
you on tour one of these days. I would love that that. I
am a huge fan of the BransonShow. You have to come out to
(10:07):
that for sure. And there's alwayssomething new. If you see the show
and you come back, there's alwayssomething that you missed the time before.
There's new animals, there's new there'sjust so much going on, So Raisa,
there are so many kids that wantto do magic. So what is
your number one advice to somebody that'slike, hey, I want to do
what he does. Man? Youknow, I think that it's a different
(10:28):
world today than it was even justa few years ago, and it's not
as much about finding success is sustainingit. Anybody can become essentially famous to
a certain group of people overnight,but then what do you do with that?
How do you capitalize on that?I've had reality show TV appearances that
are seen by three million people andthen I post some stupid video on my
(10:54):
phone on TikTok and I had onelast week. They hit fifty million and
it is still growing. And sonow it's anyone has that platform, and
so it's easier. But it's alsoeasier to get lost in the sea of
all of that. Sure, soit makes it more difficult to capitalize on
it. Yes, you can geta bunch of people to see something,
but what do you want to doafter that? Do you want to grow
(11:16):
a fan base to want to builda business, whant to monetize the videos?
Do you want to have them ultimatelycome buy tickets to your show,
So it just takes a lot moreplanning and thought process. So for a
young magician or a young performer comingup, you know, I always just
I advised to look ahead, don'tjust post content, but figure out what
your end goal is, what doyou want to do with the people who
(11:37):
see that, and then health strategizewhat you're putting out so it accomplishes your
goals absolutely. So I know youcited, you know, Blaine as an
inspiration for you, but you're theinspiration for a lot of these people.
So like, what is the legacythat you want to leave as a magician.
Well, I got interested by aperformer bring me up on stage,
and it was an overwhelmingly positive experience, having a crowd of people applaud and
(12:01):
you know, especially for a kid, that's inspiring moment. I've now had
the chance to bring other kids upand give them that same moment, and
several of them have become professional magiciansnow years later. You know, eight
year old is now eighteen and I'mmy Google alerts, I'm reading an article
(12:22):
that they're performing somewhere and they saythat their inspiration was me, just like
I'm talking about my inspiration being DavidBlaine or others, and so that experience
is really cool. But it's almostthe point where that's starting to happen again
because these performers are performing for otherpeople and so seeing that torch being passed
and more people being inspired, youknow, that's really a beautiful thing that
(12:46):
carries on for generations to come.It's incredible. Well, what a blessing
that you're able to do what you'rebest at and so talented at and passing
that torch along. So I know, we're we're so happy to be back
here talking to you. May makesure that you follow Raisa on all major
social media platforms. We're going topost all of that up. I know
we could talk to him a wholelot longer. He has a show in
just less than five minutes here atthe Branson Famous Theater, so make sure
(13:09):
you check him out here and onthe road. Raza, it was an
absolute pleasure. Thank you so muchfor busy with me. I apprecies all
right, and thank you as alwaysfor listening in to Backstage Pass. We'll
see you next time. This hasbeen a presentation of the FCP podcast Network,
(13:33):
where Real Talk Lifts visit us onlineat FCB podcasts dot com
This is the FCB Podcast Network.This is Backstage Pass with Victoria Henley.
(00:21):
Hi everyone, and welcome into anotherepisode of Backstage Pass. It's Victoria here
and I am sitting backstage with theMan, the Myth, the legend himself,
international magic superstar Za Raza. Howare you? Wow? Well,
thank you so much. I'm great, good good so Za. You travel
the world doing your show, doingyour magic. You are truly an international
(00:41):
superstar, huge fan base. Butlet's take it back to the very beginning.
When did you know that you wantedthis to be your life? At
the age of six was the firstdefining moment. I got a chance to
see magic up close. The magiciancame to my elementary school and it was
it was just this chance meeting.I raised my hand and got up on
(01:02):
stage. I have to help withthe trick and next thing I knew,
I was asking for a magic hitfor my birthday and the rest is history.
So it was just the product ofvery supportive parents and this crazy dream
at an early age. That's incredible. Now you have a huge fan base.
What I love about your fan base. You see all ages, you
(01:22):
see grandparents, you see little kids, college age kids. What do you
do to really pull in that widerange of people. I mean, we
try and make the show for everybody, because we'll have people that come to
the show, but also they're goingto bring people along with them that may
or may not want to come seea magic show, you know, And
(01:44):
my goal is to make the showwhen that person over who didn't want to
come and see the show in thefirst place. So I kind of look
out and I scanned the audience andI know, Okay, that's a husband
that the wife wanted to come tothe show. This isn't his vibe.
He doesn't think it is. Andso I kind of watch him throughout the
show, and I watched his bodylanguage shift, and I always trying to
focus on one person. And bythe end of it, if they're laughing
(02:07):
and standing up, you know,standing ovation, sometimes they're the ones that
that that lead it. Just becausethey didn't expect to like it, they
did. And there's there's so manydifferent elements. You know. The music,
Um it's it's hard hitting, youknow, concert type music. We've
got, uh there's a lot ofrock, there's modern things, but there's
also some throwbacks as well. Sopeople sometimes identify with the music and the
(02:30):
lights and all the production will sometimesdraw people in, and the magic itself
is as Court's relatable. I don'twant to just do magic with these weird
objects that you see typically an illusionshow, sparkly boxes and these weird you
know, top hat and cape andall this sort of thing. It's not
(02:52):
always that, but you know,if you picture a magician, it's this
guy pulling a rab out of ahat. And so what I've done is
I've just taken these age old oldtricks and I've reinvented them with ordinary objects.
Yeah, power tools, spray paint, you know, oil, cookie,
helicopter, motorcycle, and so againit brings in a wide demographic because
(03:15):
all of these things that I'm usingare things that you have in your garage,
you see in your everyday live andall of a sudden, this isn't
just a distant magic show. Thisis a relatable experience. Absolutely. What
I love about your show it's arock concert meets a magic show. I
mean, there's so much going on, but then when you really look at
its score, you've got the closeup you know, sleight of hand.
(03:35):
Who is your number one inspiration ormaybe more than one that you're like,
yeah, this person really inspires me. I Mean, someone I've always respected
is David Blaine. I grew upwatching him on TV, and the more
that I learned about him and spendtime with his team, he really cares
about the art form and he'll he'llstudy something or trained for a year just
(03:57):
to be able to do one particularstunt their trick. Yeah, there's just
a lot that I've respected about him, and he's inspired me and pushed me.
So obviously there's there's many more,but he would be the first person
that would come to mind, ofcourse. So you yourself, just as
Raisa, have a huge name,and I'm sure you get recognized out and
about, but you've also had appearanceson Duck Dynasty, I mean, A
(04:18):
and e tons of reality shows andtelevision shows. What is the number one
of those that people really recognize youfrom? Penn and Teller fool Us.
For some reason, I think it'sit was an iconic I mean, their
iconic performers they spend that's the birdsin the background. By the way,
I'm gonna have my editor keep thatin because I love it. Let's keep
(04:43):
going, Let's keep you know,of course, let's keep it okay for
those of you who don't know whatI love about like live behind the scenes
interviews, we had to pull therabbits out for we have rabbits. Raisa
works with a monkey. There's amouse literally right behind us and birds and
I think that's awesome. So yeah, you've left a few out too.
Um yeah, well yeah, typicallythat would be a recut. We'll take
(05:05):
that again. But hey, we'regonna keep it real. We'll see,
We'll keep it real, okay.Um, yeah, I mean so,
if you're to name one show,I think I mean Duck Dynasty. You
mentioned that that spand I think elevenseasons is always on a rerun and I
had to opportunity be a part ofthe final season and so um, those
(05:26):
re air more than others. Butsomething about Penn and Teller Fulos. I
think there's been a lot of magicshows over the course of time, but
that one just does it does itdifferently, the fact that you're trying to
fool the smartest magicians, and thatthey kind of divulge little pieces in code,
but you have to listen carefully tofigure out what they're saying. There's
(05:48):
just there's different elements and it.Uh, there's just more depth of that
show. So I think, youknow, the number one show probably would
be that one. Um, butthere's other things as well that people will
come to the show and not realizethat they that they saw that before,
and then when they see you dothe trick, they're like, oh,
you're that guy too. And yeah, it's a lot of different things.
(06:08):
But some of the magic in theshow is huge and grand scale. Like
I have this big drill that Iconcrete augur like a twenty foot drill,
drill through a person, lift themup. I passed someone through the spinning
blades of a jet engine. Imake a helicopter repair. But then after
all of that, someone will sometimessay it was the oreo that impressed me,
(06:30):
a little thing with an oreo thatI've done on a bunch of TV
shows. And again, I thinkthat just comes down to the relatability factor
of it doesn't always have to bethe most massive piece of equipment to strike
a nerve. Yeah, of course, speaking of a grand scale production,
I mean this is a huge production. You are hard pressed to find a
bigger magic show than this. Andyou guys go on the road when you're
(06:50):
not here in Branson. We're goingto post the show schedules and how you
can follow along on social media.But I imagine the logistics must be crazy
of taking the show on the road, walk us through a day in the
life of Raiza touring. What isit like? It is? It's a
little insane. So we just gotback in off of for East Coast dates.
We ended that in New York andso I had a show here last
(07:14):
Thursday night and then flew into Ithink Connecticut, and we did four dates.
But I literally had a show hereat eight o'clock and by noon we
were sound checking with the same showacross the country. And the way that
we do that is we have aduplicate of every piece of equipment that we
own. So all the illusions,the lighting, the costuming, anything big,
(07:38):
too small, it's duplicate. Wehave two of them, and so
one can be either a container headingacross the ocean somewhere, could be on
a semi drive me across the country. Allows us to do a show in
one location one night and then flyacross the country and do it again somewhere
else with a you know, ahuge production. Interesting, So what do
(08:01):
you think is the biggest misconception aboutwhat you do. I mean, I
think people come into a magic showexpecting to see what they've seen before,
and I want to show them somethingbrand new and different. And so I
want to be a magic show forpeople that like magic, and I want
to be a magic show for peoplewho hate magic. I love that.
(08:22):
Yeah, I mean to boil itdown, that's my goal. Awesome,
Well, Raisa, this was somuch fun, kind of getting to look
behind the magic. And thank youas always for joining us. We're going
to be right back with Raza rightafter the short break. These days,
it seems like everybody's talking, butno one is actually listening to the things
(08:43):
they're saying. Critical thinking isn't dead, but it's definitely low on oxygen.
Join me Kira Davis on Jeff Listento yourself every week as we reason through
issues big and small, critique ourown ideas, and learn to draw our
talking points all the way out totheir logical conclude. Subscribe to Just Listen
to Yourself with Kia Davis, anFCB radio podcast on Apple, on Spotify,
(09:05):
iHeart, or wherever you get yourpodcasts. This is Backstage Pass with
Victoria Henley. Welcome back into backstagepass everyone. It's Victoria Henley here at
the beautiful Branson Famous Theater with noneother than Raiza. So we've been talking
about his background in magic, allof that good stuff. But I'm sure
(09:26):
you want to know where you cansee Raza. Well, you can see
him in Branson, that's his residentshow, but he travels all over the
US, all over the world.Raza. How can we follow along?
Well, official website which hows allthe tour dates is rais alive dot com
or zyalive dot com. And thenfollow me. I'm most active on Instagram
(09:46):
and Facebook, but you know allof the above. I'll pop on Snapchat
and Twitter once in a while aswell, but I put the most content
on on those and TikTok as well. But they hit the tour dates rais
dot com. It's the best place. Absolutely, We're gonna have to see
you on tour one of these days. I would love that that. I
am a huge fan of the BransonShow. You have to come out to
(10:07):
that for sure. And there's alwayssomething new. If you see the show
and you come back, there's alwayssomething that you missed the time before.
There's new animals, there's new there'sjust so much going on, So Raisa,
there are so many kids that wantto do magic. So what is
your number one advice to somebody that'slike, hey, I want to do
what he does. Man? Youknow, I think that it's a different
(10:28):
world today than it was even justa few years ago, and it's not
as much about finding success is sustainingit. Anybody can become essentially famous to
a certain group of people overnight,but then what do you do with that?
How do you capitalize on that?I've had reality show TV appearances that
are seen by three million people andthen I post some stupid video on my
(10:54):
phone on TikTok and I had onelast week. They hit fifty million and
it is still growing. And sonow it's anyone has that platform, and
so it's easier. But it's alsoeasier to get lost in the sea of
all of that. Sure, soit makes it more difficult to capitalize on
it. Yes, you can geta bunch of people to see something,
but what do you want to doafter that? Do you want to grow
(11:16):
a fan base to want to builda business, whant to monetize the videos?
Do you want to have them ultimatelycome buy tickets to your show,
So it just takes a lot moreplanning and thought process. So for a
young magician or a young performer comingup, you know, I always just
I advised to look ahead, don'tjust post content, but figure out what
your end goal is, what doyou want to do with the people who
(11:37):
see that, and then health strategizewhat you're putting out so it accomplishes your
goals absolutely. So I know youcited, you know, Blaine as an
inspiration for you, but you're theinspiration for a lot of these people.
So like, what is the legacythat you want to leave as a magician.
Well, I got interested by aperformer bring me up on stage,
and it was an overwhelmingly positive experience, having a crowd of people applaud and
(12:01):
you know, especially for a kid, that's inspiring moment. I've now had
the chance to bring other kids upand give them that same moment, and
several of them have become professional magiciansnow years later. You know, eight
year old is now eighteen and I'mmy Google alerts, I'm reading an article
(12:22):
that they're performing somewhere and they saythat their inspiration was me, just like
I'm talking about my inspiration being DavidBlaine or others, and so that experience
is really cool. But it's almostthe point where that's starting to happen again
because these performers are performing for otherpeople and so seeing that torch being passed
and more people being inspired, youknow, that's really a beautiful thing that
(12:46):
carries on for generations to come.It's incredible. Well, what a blessing
that you're able to do what you'rebest at and so talented at and passing
that torch along. So I know, we're we're so happy to be back
here talking to you. May makesure that you follow Raisa on all major
social media platforms. We're going topost all of that up. I know
we could talk to him a wholelot longer. He has a show in
just less than five minutes here atthe Branson Famous Theater, so make sure
(13:09):
you check him out here and onthe road. Raza, it was an
absolute pleasure. Thank you so muchfor busy with me. I apprecies all
right, and thank you as alwaysfor listening in to Backstage Pass. We'll
see you next time. This hasbeen a presentation of the FCP podcast Network,
(13:33):
where Real Talk Lifts visit us onlineat FCB podcasts dot com
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