Magician Shin Lim Announces Move From The Mirage to The Venetian

What's up guys? Leslie Robbins here for Young Hollywood, coming to you from Las Vegas. I am inside the Mirage, about to take you behind the scenes with the hottest headliner on the strip. Oh, and he's a two-time America's Got Talent winner. Let's go.

Wow.

Hey, good to see you.

Hey.

It has been forever. It's been over four years. March 2020. I can't believe it. It's time flies cuz it kind of feels like yesterday, a bit.

I know you were in our Beverly Hills studio. I remember that.

And we've been wanting to come to your Las Vegas home. Your second home. Now you're here.

Now I'm here. This is where limitless goes down. This is like where it all began, you know, I never expected it to happen like this, but it's crazy. It did happen.

You're at the Mirage. But the Mirage just announced that they're going to be no more. But, so does that mean you're retiring? What is actually happening to the magician here?

No. Yeah, they're they're going into construction. They're going to demo this whole place down. And so I have to move, essentially. I'm going to be moving to No one's actually known about this, so no one knows yet, except for you. I'm going to tell you, you're the first person first media person ever to know about this. I'm going to the Venetian. I'm going to be going to the Venetian right across the street. Literally right across the street. And I'll be opening, uh, hopefully Septem the end of September, middle of October. Something like that. If I could stay here forever, I would. I love this place. This is literally like the perfect hotel for me and theater for me. Like, it's the Mirage, you know, it's where Siegfried and Roy made their name right here. And so for me, I felt so honored to perform for the past five years. This is crazy. Since 2018, 2019, and, uh, so many memories, so many amazing memories. I've had here with my team and even with the audience as well. So many crazy things have happened on this stage.

So when fans come, what do they think? How how are they reacting? And people that haven't seen it, what can they expect?

It's different every single show. And that's why it's so fun and so entertaining because the show essentially is the same every day because it's the same acts. We always end at 90 minutes. The show's 90 minutes exact. What makes it different, though, is the people that go on stage. So the spectators that go on stage, they're they're kind of sometimes they're just crazy, you know? Sometimes they're they're either super drunk or they just have a crazy personality or we've had people without clothes on. I'm being dead serious. I've had a girl come up on stage and she didn't have any pants on. She just had lingerie, lingerie, and I didn't know at all until she stood up. And I was like, "Oh, you forgot your pants."

So what can people expect at the Venetian?

I can't believe I'm saying this word. Yes. Yes, the Venetian, it's going to be a bigger show. So, because so right here, you can see the theater, uh, the screen, uh, while it is big for this theater, uh, Venetian's going to be even bigger. It's going to be like almost two times the size of that. So it's going to like be like IMAX quality. And so at Venetian, there's a ton of space. And so we're going to be able to do bigger things, essentially. Make the audience feel like they're watching something spectacular. Cuz, you know, there's in the show, there's just so much close-up intimate things. And so to kind of contrast that with something bigger will make will just make the audience just feel like they're on a roller coaster ride of different types of magic, different emotions.

Okay, so talk about the first time you ever came to Vegas. You were a kid, a teenager, actually. Yeah. And could you have ever imagined?

No, no, I came I came to Vegas. That was my first experience. I was 18. I came I came with my mom. And my first magic show was Lance Burton. And when I watched Lance Burton, I said to myself, I said, "Oh my God, this is incredible. This is exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to be exactly like Lance. Perform on the Vegas Strip." You know, that to me, that's just amazing. And also seeing the whole Circu du Soleil, like Vegas experience, you know, that kind of something that's never been done before anywhere else in the world, except for Las Vegas. It's so special to Vegas. And seeing uh Ka was the show I watched. Of course. And it was incredible. Absolutely incredible. And ever since then, I said, you know, this is probably one of the most unique cities I've ever been to. And, uh, that would be a dream to be able to be a resident here.

It's beautiful. And and you get to do it all up there. You want to show your room?

Yeah. Of course. This is this is the main stage. All these cards are are mine. Uh I'll probably keep them as a souvenir.

Listen. Yeah. Your cards got taken. This view. What goes through your head when you're standing here? And I have to say, even watching you on stage, the shy boy that you talk about that you used to be. Yeah. That's still in you a little bit. That shy boy not really comfortable talking to like You're such a presence that it's okay that like innocence is still in you, and that's beautiful.

Oh, thank you. I wanted to stay here forever because this is like the best theater I've ever performed in, really. The way the energy is just kept in this theater is just so special. I've never really felt that in any other theater before. Everything, like people's applause, everything is just kind of nothing escapes this room. And and luckily at the Venetian, it was the same. When I went there, I watched a show there, and I said, "Oh, this is the same type of feeling." So I'm excited to go there.

And you know what? I was so happy to see in your show you playing the piano and you talking about that, because that is such an important part of your life story. You could have been a professional pianist.

That was my goal. It was before magic. I was that was in my head, you know, my piano teacher as well, my parents, we were all so excited about because I was, you know, I was pretty good. I got to university. I I was that was my goal was to be a concert pianist. And, uh, you know, things happened. Of course, life happens. And but still, I um it is such a big part of my life, music. And in it I still get to do it, though. You know, in my show, like all the music that you hear in the show, that that's curated by me, so I do I do all the music in the entire show from beginning, all even even from the walk-in.

That's all your music.

It's half of it's original, and the other half is mostly Hans Zimmer and other musicians.

That's beautiful.

But but it's all curated, so like I make make sure each song is like very specific to what emotion and et cetera.

What inspires you to create music and then does that lead into creating new tricks?

For me, the music is what drives the emotion of the show. The magic's just that visual that people kind of get entertained for the emotion. I use music for that. So that's why I always tell people like in this show specifically, music is 50% of the show. It's so so important. So for me, when I'm picking the songs, I don't really pick it for the trick per se. I pick it so that, okay, what part of the show is this? Is it in the middle where we want people to start feeling more and more crescendo, crescendo? So if that's what I want, then I pick a specific song just for that. Or I I had someone write a custom song just to crescendo their emotions up to some sort of climax and boom. End of show.

Yeah, well, speaking of show, show me how to get ready for the show.

Oh, right in there. Right in there. Yeah, right in there. It's a my dressing room.

You got a star dressing room in the show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.