Las Vegas Headliner Shin Lim's New Home at The Venetian

What's up, guys? Leslie Robbins here. Young Hollywood is back in Las Vegas. I'm outside the Palazzo Theater at the Venetian, where I'm about to take you behind the scenes with two-time America's Got Talent winner. Our dear friend and Vegas headliner, Mr. Shin Lim. Shin, good to see you. How are you?

I'm amazing. I told you I was coming back.

Yes, you did. To your new home. Here it is. Wow. Palazzo. It's a it's more seats.

Of course, it's more seats. Way, way more seats.

Okay. The new home of Limitless. Now, it looks a little familiar from the theater at the Mirage, but you have so much space.

Yes. Everything is pretty much bigger. We still had screens at the Mirage, but this one here is almost close to like IMAX size, I would say.

When I was last here in Vegas, just over a year ago, you made the big announcement that the Mirage was closing. How was that transition for you?

It was really, really bittersweet. It felt like my home and I, you know, they even tore apart everything. Everything was just barebones. And I got to see all of that happen, uh, whether that was a good thing or not. It felt like something tore away from my heart.

Watching your own surgery.

Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. It was it was kind of crazy.

What did you get to keep from your old theater?

Pretty much everything has been changed.

Yeah. How many seats are here? This is huge.

1,600.

Wow.

Sometimes you think, oh, there's more seats, you have to project more, you have to perform bigger, but somehow, because of the way this theater has been structured, it feels very intimate. Yeah. Yeah, it feels really, really intimate, and it's which is good. It's good for a close-up show. Because you, you know, when you're doing close-up, you want it to feel very natural, raw, and not artificial in any way. And so this is actually, in my opinion, a better theater than the Mirage because, uh, in terms of in terms of viewing the magic because you still get to feel like you're kind of there next to the artist as as they're performing.

And is music still part of the storytelling because you are a piano player at heart.

Yes. Yeah. No, no, no. I music drives the entire show. And the the music system here is actually really good. So, very powerful. Everything just vibrates when it gets when the climax happens. It it's it's very uh very strong. Strong addition to the show. My magic has also changed. I I made some changes to the the close-up routines. Okay. Uh, you know, the smaller stuff, still very impactful because we blow it up on the screen and so it it doesn't feel very like close-up magic anymore.

Well, I think I need to see some of that.

Yeah. I do. I'll I'll show you something. Close.

Come on. I can't be here and you're not doing magic for me.

Of course not. All right, Leslie. Um. Look, I I I have a deck of cards here, but you know, you're going to pick multiple cards. So I'm going to riffle down like this. You just say stop at any point and then we're going to pick two cards that are exactly where you say stop. Okay. Okay, so just stop right there. Okay. Take a look at the card, uh, the four of hearts, and then the next card over is the uh, Ace of diamonds. Uh, do me a favor. Um, so we have the four and the Ace. Uh, could you grab grab that Sharpie?

Sure.

Yeah. I want you to sign that Ace all over. Your signature. Okay. Great. And then the four. Okay. Okay. Great. Yeah. So, we'll leave the four over there. And just the Ace. Now, watch what happens to this Ace of diamonds. Okay. I can actually take your signature. Uh-huh. If I just squeeze hard enough, Leslie, notice how it just comes off. That's just your signature. Uh, this this next part is actually harder. The next part is actually the entire card. Ace of diamonds. And it can completely come off. Check check check check the four. Underneath it. Yeah, flip it over.

You did it again, didn't you? What? Stop. What? That's crazy, right? Shin, stop. How? I did. That that's it. I did. I'm stopping. That's that's the end of the trick. How long did it take you to master that? Because that's quite unbelievable. It's crazy. How'd you do that?

I mean, in the there are certain techniques in magic that you have to kind of train for like eight or nine years, and that that's embedded within this routine. But when you present something, that can always be like, like I learned this presentation just yesterday, for example. So, but but you need to have the background of all the techniques in order to be able to present it in this fashion.

So that was almost an exclusive of that card trick.

Yeah. Well, I've never done it before. This is the first time I ever performed.

Now I need another one.

Okay, okay. All right. Here, uh, can you shuffle shuffle mix it mix up these cards as much as you like. You're a regular, completely regular card. Okay. All right. Okay.

Rolling my sleeves up.

Okay, I've shuffled. Okay, good. Um, I I'm going to I'm going to do something. Uh, can you just pick any any card out? And you're going to sign it, okay? Sign it again. Sign it again. It's going to be another souvenir. Okay. But this time I'll keep the souvenir. Oh. Because I would like to put it in my dressing room. Oh, that's nice. Oh, yeah, thanks. Go. Okay. We'll place your card into the middle of the deck, okay? This is this remember the thing I was talking about where uh I trained for many, many years. Yes. So, to have a grasp of just basic sleight of hand. Of course. This is what it is. Okay. So, so your card is here. It's about halfway into the deck. And this is what we call the ambitious card routine. This is something that we all have to learn. Push the card all the way in. Okay. Hand out like this. All right. So it was about 25 cards, right? In the deck. If I snap my hands, that card can go down all the way to the bottom of the entire deck. Check the bottom card. Oh, wow. You picked the King of Spades. That's actually my favorite card. I'm not joking. It's my favorite card. If I wave my hand like this, and I'm being serious, it is my favorite card. That king disappears and then it jumps right back to the top. I'll do it one more time. Watch the King of Spades. I leave it about halfway. Can you see it sticking out? Yeah. Yeah. Push it all the way in. Okay. Push it all the way in. That that one's that one's misdirection. Here. I'll I'll do I'll do it one more time. I'll do one more time. Uh. Grab grab another card, not the king. A random card. It's not going to be the king. Is it No. No. It's not even close. Watch the two of diamonds. I can shake it like one, two, three and then it changes right into your King of Spades. I'll do it one last time. Watch the King of Spades is about halfway into the deck. Yes. Push it all the way in. Push it all the way in. You know, I wasn't entirely fair. I need to show you the bottom card. It's not on the bottom. It's not on top. So it has to be somewhere in the middle of the deck, but I didn't fully roll my sleeves up. Here. Yeah. Check the card that's really So that one is eight years of practice for this type of thing. And I'm going to keep this because it has your signature on it. So, I'll put it somewhere in my dressing room.

The cool thing about Limitless, you have a revolving door of guest performers all the time. We've had some of them, the clairvoyants in our studio. Yes. Amazing. How do you keep it fresh?

In 2024, we had multiple mentalists come to the show. They did three month stints, just like the clairvoyants. Every mentalist has a different type of energy. And so we've almost like locked in all of these different sides of Limitless that we can instantly implement when they come in. So the show is almost completely different every time.

I have to meet them now. Oh, yeah.

Okay, well, let me get them. And stop.

Walk me through your roles at Limitless.

So we both tag team in hosting the show. So we'll guide you through Shin's story, make sure that everyone's involved, and get all the really nitty-gritty detail of Shin's journey through the world of magic.

Okay, break down what a mentalist really is. How does it work?

It's essentially trying to control, influence, or predict human behavior, uh, using a range of skills. Um, that looks at sort of people psychology and how they're behaving. The show never uses any plants or stooges. People are chosen at random using throws of frisbees and stuff. So it's completely random.

So if today the frisbee goes to that lady over there, how do you actually get in her mind?

There's a bunch of different techniques. So really there's only two ways to know what's in someone's brain. Is either to put a thought in there or take a thought out. So depending on what we're trying to do, we might do one or the other. We might lie to you and be doing one, but say we're doing the other. And you're just trying to get a read of someone really quickly. And I think we all do it.

Like you've all walked into a room at a party and looked at someone and thought, that person's cool, or I don't trust that person. It's just that, but dialed up to 11 because we weren't invited to parties as kids. So we had to learn to do this.

Oh, now you're invited to every party, especially being in Vegas. You're invited everywhere, right?

Yeah, and I don't go. I am I like to I like to go to bed early.

How do all the shows differ then? Because obviously you're getting a different audience every night.

For us, it's very different because, you know, we're bringing people up on stage or we're throwing a frisbee. We don't have the slight of hand skills that Shin has, and it really can go anywhere any night. Things are often great, and sometimes there's a little tap dancing for us trying to make sense of what's going on.

I I've done so much research, obviously, on you and the both of you prepping for this, trying to learn a little bit about how you do what you do. And I got nothing.

The real mystery, the real great thing about the show is getting to explore that magic, getting to explore that mystery. Because in life, you know, it's so easy just to say to Chat GPT, how does that work or like Google it. Whereas like I think one of the last things that we need to hold on to as human beings is is the experience of mystery and knowing that like we're a tiny thing in a giant universe, and this is a little taste of that.

Talk about your experience how you got to the show because it's like we were talking about, it's been a revolving door of people, you know, in his cast.

I have a background as a magician. You know, I started performing magic when I was five years old. But in in the UK, I made a uh bunch of TV magic shows. Um, one of my favorites was called Tricks from the Bible, recreating all the tricks of Moses, Jesus, and Harry Potter, all those guys. And um, and mentalism just sort of drew me in because it it it's it's a whole different it's a whole different world, and it's almost older than magic, you know. The reason you couldn't find secrets online is because they're in books, they're literally thousands of years old. My aunt was like a tarot reader and a palm reader, so I grew up sort of learning all that stuff and yeah, I went to went to college. In order to pay my way through college, I worked as like a telephone psychic, so that became a big basis of me being able to like get into people's brains, and it became a show and then I got a DM from Shin saying like, hey, senior stuff can you know, slid into my DMs. That's that's awesome.

Wait, stop. You DM'd him on Instagram?

I think I said, are you available? I think that was that was the first thing. Because we needed we needed someone pretty quickly. Um, this is at the Mirage and and he said, yes. And it was great. And that was that was the start of an excellent relationship.

Okay, well, now that I have all of you here at the Venetian, we're going to go check out the stage at the Venetian. Let's go take a walk. Show me around.

Okay, so break down where we are right now. We're standing on the stage in the Plaza Theater in the Venetian. And as you can see, the stage set is very minimal because there really are no trapdoors and mirrors and things hiding in the darkness. It's a very open stage. There isn't a seat in the room where you can't see everything on the stage, which for a magician or mentalist is terrifying. You're seeing like a 360 view of the show.

You said the word terrifying. Do you or any of you still get butterflies, do you get nervous?

You know, It's terrifying right now. I'm constantly.

No, you're not.

Shivering leaf of a man.

Do you get scared?

No, I'm I'm dead inside. So it's it comes when you get a British passport. You also have to give up caring.

Your title is mentalist/comedian, so that's where the funny stuff comes in.

Yeah, debatably. You decide if the comedian thing works for you.

Well, I remember last year, Shin was talking about an audience member that came up and all of a sudden realized that they didn't have pants on.

Yeah, oh. Yeah. I talk about this all the time.

So is there is there another gal that didn't have pants on?

It was two weeks ago there was someone who was wearing a very lovely long dress and only when they got on stage and the lights hit it that yeah, just uh completely see through. Very fashionable, very modern. She's like taped to like cover up the the private parts. The essentials. Yeah. But but like but from afar, I I thought she was wearing clothes. I I had no idea.

Right now, we're about a half hour before the show, ish. Something like that, yeah. Okay, well, I have a few more minutes with you guys. So let's like see what else we got back here.

So this is backstage. This is the heart of everything that happens. We've got our people who are in charge of showing video and making sure that everyone can see on our big screens. And then our stage manager station to make sure the music's playing at all the right time. And then just comfy seats for us to to wait to go on stage. So it's again, like nothing backstage. We're not hiding lions and tigers and stuff. Actually, there are stuff down there. There's lots of stuff down here. It's it's important backstage to have good omens. Any trinkets are welcome, any sort of gifts that Shin gets given and they're kept backstage and we look after them. So back here we've got um Kasi, Shin's wife's, uh, exercise place. So she she'll be stretching throughout the show. She's still in the show. Yes, yes, yes. An incredible aerialist and doing magic combining two incredibly hard things together, which is mind-blowing. But yeah, she'll be stretching out here, making sure that she can do splits and making us feel bad about how inflexible we are. Not doing that anymore. But you know, there's always next year. And then yeah, just some quick change portions. We spill something on ourselves and we don't have to take our pants off in front of our co-workers because that's a HR violation.

Well, why don't we leave the pants off to the audience members in Vegas? That was comedy?

Yeah. Comedy. You nailed it. 10 out of 10.