Justin Willman brings Netflix series 'Magic for Humans' to Tucson

Comic-magician Justin Willman spent the pandemic performing magic for nearly a million people from all over the world.

That’s how many people all told tuned into his Zoom shows — “Magic for Humans at Home,” a takeoff on his 2018 Netflix series “Magic for Humans.”

Now many of those folks, whose only familiarity with Willman was through his television appearances on celebrity chef Rachel Ray’s talk show and hosting “Cupcake Wars” on the Food Network and “Baking Impossible” on Netflix, are seeing him live.

“A lot of people who come to my shows now discovered me from watching me on TV ... and on Zoom but have never seen me live,” said the 41-year-old Willman, who is bringing “Magic for Humans” to Fox Tucson Theatre on Saturday, May 21. “What’s great about the art of magic and the show I’ve put together is it is even more amazing in person. When you are there, you’re in the audience and this show is happening in real time and you are a part of it. … It’s much easier to get swept away into the magic and the experience when you are there.”

The Zoom version of “Magic for Humans” was spawned, he said, out of the need to “let out the kink in my creative hose.” It also helped him deal with the loss of his mother, who died early into the pandemic.

“I think I took for granted how vital (performing) was to my personhood and to my emotional and human wellbeing to have an outlet,” Willman said.

His show Saturday is his first Tucson show in a decade and will be the first time he performs outside of the Gaslight Theatre, where he was a regular going back as early as 2002.

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He went by the stage name “Justin Kredible” back then.

“I used to come to visit my grandparents in SaddleBrooke and I would do shows at the Gaslight,” he said. “And that started this relationship that kind of ticked kind of a personal and professional box. It was great quality time with my grandparents where they got to see me perform and I would come spend time in Tucson anyway. And also being able to have this incredible venue and audience and fanbase to build. The Gaslight was special.”

Willman was in the middle of telling a story about the magic friends he met in Tucson including Tucson native Eric Buss when we got a Facebook messenger notification. It was, of all people, Buss.

“Wow, that is so weird,” Willman said, recalling how he and Buss had known one another since they competed in the same magic contest in 1996. Buss won the adult prize and Willman won the teen category.

Willman, the father of a 4-year-old son named Jackson, said he hopes people in Tucson remember him.

He remembers us.

“There wasn’t another city like that for me,” he said. “Tucson was always kind of a like a second home.”