Role as illusionist keeps actor busy honing his magic

LOS ANGELES — Members of the team behind the new ABC police procedural “Deception” are calling the show “Magician: Impossible.”

At the heart of the the series is superstar magician Cameron Black (Jack CutmoreScott), whose career has been ruined by scandal.

Black decides that the only suitable place for a guy to practice his art of deception, influence and illusion is with the FBI.

He uses his magic skills to help the government catch the world’s most-elusive criminals while staging the biggest illusions of his career.

Executive producer Chris Fedak rejects the idea that “Deception” is a show about magic crimes.

“You have how you capture bad guys,” Fedak said. “Sometimes, you get them doing a mistake — you catch them doing something. But, in this show, the fun of it is using illusion, using deception.”

Deception, he said, is sometimes the only effective alternative.

“We are not always going to capture the bad guy by using guns and chasing them down. We are going to have to deceive them.

“We are going to have to be smart, and that’s where illusion comes into it.”

The show features no specific magic crime, Fedak said.

“It’s like every crime in this show, we can deal with any type of crime, and that’s also great because it’s the FBI. They go after everybody.”

Cutmore-Scott is the guy who must make all the illustions look real.

The British actor, who was recently seen in the Christopher Nolan feature “Dunkirk,” made his motion-picture debut in Matthew Vaughn’s “Kingsman: The Secret Service.” His TV credits include the “Cooper Barrett’s Guide to Surviving Life.”

The actor has numerous stage credits but has never taken on a role requiring him to saw a woman in half or make the Empire State Building disappear.

In high school, he said, one of his good friends was a talented magician, often using CutmoreScott as his test subject for a new trick.

He picked up a few things, he said, but not enough to make his “Deception” character resemble the work of David Copperfield or David Blaine.

“It’s been a very steep learning curve,” Cutmore-Scott said. “I have David Kwong to thank for most of the day to day, as well as another magician, Francis Menotti, who works with us. ... It definitely is an ongoing thing. I’m trying to stay a little bit ahead of each episode and find out what’s coming up in order to have a week or two of practice.”

Fedak praised Cutmore-Scott for his commitment. If “Deception” is going to work, after all, the actor has to look as if he’s performing each trick, not relying on editing magic.

That’s the primary task of Kwong, who was the lead consultant for the magic-filled feature film “Now You See Me.”

“We make magic easier for actors to do,” Kwong said. “But we were fortunate enough that Jack is actually very talented with sleight of hand. He kind of messed around with it as a teenager, and he’s picked it up really, really easily.”