When we reach Colin Cloud over Zoom, he’s in his hotel room in Edinburgh, Scotland. His hair, on the other hand, is on a vastly different planet.
“Sonic the Hedgehog, Jimmy Neutron, it’s in full capacity, just for you,” he jokes, primping his gravity defying updo.
The charm is on, despite the fact that it’s 10:30 p.m. and the America’s Got Talent finalist is visibly knackered from a long day at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where his brow-raising mentalism has rattled a few minds and incited a few freakouts inside McEwan Hall, an iconic landmark of the capital.
“I’m from here,” Cloud says of Scotland. “This is where I got a name for myself, where I got noticed, where The Illusionists picked me up, brought me to [London’s] West End first, then America and that led to AGT. Without this place, I would be nothing.”
Cloud, who describes himself as an empath, wields something variably close to a sixth sense, challenging audience members to conjure up a word, song or memory and guessing it without fail. That ability has aided him in becoming a globally recognized mentalist, especially here in Las Vegas, where he’s shared a stage with Shin Lim in his Limitless show at the Mirage.
“It relies on me being in the room with those people and really observing everything and using that and making it feel like that show happened just for them,” Cloud says. “I grew up in Edinburgh watching stand-up comedians, and the best stand-up comedians are Sherlock Holmeses. They’re observing everything. They’re paying attention to all of it. I just truly fell in love with that approach.”
What started as a two-week engagement blossomed into a years-long partnership between Lim and Cloud, who complemented the AGT champion’s close-up card magic with mental magic that has left everyone from Prince William to Steve Carell speechless. Lim is launching a new residency at Venetian in October; Cloud is stepping out to headline Mastermind, his own first Strip show at Harrah’s Cabaret.
“I wanted to, from a place of love and respect for how much I care about Shin, remain with that show and love what we built there,” Cloud says. “I’m very proud of that show and the impact that it had, because Vegas is the magic capital of the world. I’m going to be forever grateful to him for trusting me to be his sidekick.”
The mentalist enlisted the help of David Gerard and Ryan K. Davidson, two of “the best magicians on the planet,” to collaborate with him behind the scenes on Mastermind. And the show also functions as a full-circle moment for Cloud, who moves into the Harrah’s space where his good friend Tape Face once performed.
“I’ve always looked at him as a real hero of mine,” he says. “In Edinburgh, I kind of followed his trajectory where if he did a room one year, I would then move into it, follow him, almost like a little brother to his big brother.”
A headlining show in Vegas looks a lot like Edinburgh in that the audience is so diverse, he says. And having an ongoing set also allows him to experiment and stay engaged, because “I never want to be the performer on stage who’s just pressing play,” he says.
There’s no telling what you’ll see, but rest assured the audience will never feel humiliated or devalued at Mastermind. In Cloud’s eyes, they’re all his co-stars.
“Mentalism, it doesn’t happen without other people,” he says. “I never want anyone else to feel like they came and they were sh** on, for lack of a better phrase. I want people to come and feel empowered by what they’ve been a part of.”
COLIN CLOUD: MASTERMIND Tuesday-Friday & Saturday, 6 p.m., $47-$67. Harrah’s Cabaret, ticketmaster.com.
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