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Video: Misty Lee, The Magic Castle's Only Female Resident Medium
Misty Lee is one of three resident mediums at the Magic Castle, and the only one of them who's a woman. In a short documentary, she discusses how she got into the magic business, her experiences with sexism in the industry and how she transforms into her character.
If you're lucky enough to get into Hollywood's Magic Castle, you might have a mystical encounter with Misty Lee, a magician, seance medium, writer, voice actress and all around interesting woman. According to her bio, she grew up in Detroit and was accustomed to hard work, as her family was poor and her father was schizophrenic. She began her career in magic at 16 but, she writes in her bio, that she became "disillusioned by the ever-shrinking costumes given to her by the local talent dispatch." Lee moved to L.A. in 2005, and is one of the only women to ever get a residency at the Magic Castle.
In an episode of Broadly's A Day With, host Michelle de Swarte gets to know Lee.
"I don't want to be this renowned female magician," Lee says at the beginning of the video. "I want to be a renowned magician."
After a brief glimpse of Lee in character, we get to know her out of character. She shows off the macabre collection of oddities and art in her home, and then illustrates a number of spooky tricks—though the video cuts out the secrets behind them.
She also talks about how much she hated once being "the girl in the box." We do hear from Lee's own girls in the boxes. One of them states that Lee is the first female magician she'd ever seen.
The video ends with a a show where she communes with ghosts at the Magic Castle. At no point does Lee ever pretend she actually speaks to spirits or that anything she does isn't an elaborate ruse, but she leaves enough out to allow us to be enchanted.
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"It's not about being clever, or oh, I got you," says Lee. "It's about this shared experience and creating awe and wonder in a world where we're sort of trained to be skeptical."
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