On a recent night in New York City I was especially excited to see my magician friend perform for a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden. Who is this magician who has performed sold-out shows in some of the best and biggest venues in the U.S.? The Ehrlich Brothers? Franz Harary? No, it was everyone’s pal, Stephen Bargatze.
Stephen killed at MSG! He performed parlor and close-up, in the round, for 20,000 people. And the audience loved him. How did he get this great gig? Nepotism.
Stephen Bargatze’s son is Nate Bargatze, one of the top comedians performing today. In 2024, Nate had the highest grossing comedy tour of the year, selling 1 million tickets and bringing in just under $90 million. This ranked him among high grossing acts across all genres, in the same neighborhood as Pearl Jam, Usher, and Paul McCartney. He has released six hour-long TV specials and six comedy albums. He has been nominated for two Grammys and two Emmys. He has hosted Saturday Night Live twice and hosted the Emmys in 2025.
Nate has also broken attendance records and ticket grossing records at 20 arenas in the U.S. by selling the most tickets in one day. Nate performs in the round on a very small platform in the middle of the arena floor. This is one reason he can break attendance records at arenas; there is more space for additional seats.
If you are not familiar with Stephen, until recently he has lived the typical life of a successful magician. He is from Louisville and lives in Nashville now. He actually went to the same high school as Lance Burton, only earlier than Lance did. He has performed birthday shows, company picnics, and “every other kind of magic show.” He was president of the national IBM in 2020. He fills in for Mac King often. In 2000, he won the IBM close-up contest. This began his many magic convention appearances in the aughts.
Stephen’s journey from normal life to Madison Square Garden started in 2004, when Nate was just starting out. When Stephen had a gig that wanted an opening act, he would hire Nate. Once, Stephen knew he was going to be late to a gig so he had Nate open the show while everyone was still eating. “I felt like Abraham,” he told me, “sacrificing my son.” Back then Stephen was charging $2,500 a gig and paid his son $500.
A few years later, Nate had a client who wanted him to do an hour, but he only had “about 18 minutes, max.” So Nate hired his dad to open for him, but there were stipulations. Nate told his dad, “You open for me. But you can’t be funny and you are not getting paid.”
Nate kept working and getting better and more popular. He got to the point where he sold out weekends at comedy clubs. Then he released two specials that aired on Comedy Central in 2011 and 2015. That exposure moved Nate from clubs to 1,500-seat theaters. In 2019 and 2021, Nate released specials on Netflix, followed by a 2023 special on Prime Video. Those streaming specials bumped Nate up to 6,000-seat theaters.
As Nate was rising in popularity, Jimmy Fallon became a fan and had him on The Tonight Show 13 times. (Fallon was also on the bill at the show I saw at MSG.)
Then Nate hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time in October 2023. In what is now considered one of the best sketches of the past several years, he played George Washington addressing his troops. The future president is explaining how the new country will use the imperial system of weights and measures instead of the simpler metric system. Look up “Washington’s Dream,” it’s hilarious.
Nate’s appearance on SNL, and the popularity of that sketch in particular, moved him from 6,000-seat theaters to 16,000-seat arenas. He said as much when he hosted the Emmys in September 2025: “I wouldn’t be here hosting the Emmys if not for SNL and Lorne Michaels.” He even opened the Emmys with a sketch inspired by “Washington’s Dream,” this time playing the man who invented television.
Once Nate started performing at theaters, Stephen joined him often. “I was slowing down doing my own shows. I thought how nice it would be for him if we traveled together. We played golf and got to spend a lot of time together,” Stephen said.
In the early days of Stephen opening for Nate, they didn’t tell the audience that Stephen was Nate’s dad. But Stephen’s character likes to pick on people, and Nate’s younger crowd was shocked more easily when Stephen was a little mean. Before the audience knew Stephen was Nate’s dad, he had to win them over. Once they started telling audiences that Stephen was Nate’s dad, things got much easier. “Just walking out I got a standing ovation because I was his dad. Then I got another one cause I didn’t stink,” Stephen told me.
Die-hard Nate fans knew his dad was a magician from his first album in 2012, Yelled at by a Clown. On the album, Nate talks about his dad: “My dad is a magician. Still is a magician. He started as a clown, though. Look, I’m not trying to come up here and act like I come from some rich magic family. Like I’m better than you guys. That’s not what it’s about. It’s weird when your dad’s a clown. Have you ever been yelled at by a clown? I have. Do you know how confusing that is? Screamed at by a guy with a smile painted on his face.” The cover of the album is a photo of Stephen in full clown makeup sitting next to a 3-year-old Nate.
Audiences react differently to a magician when that magician is the father of a beloved comedian. If Stephen makes a mistake in the show, the audience gives him a long leash. They might not know that Nate’s dad is actually a full-time pro.
When Stephen performs Taylor Hughes’ Rubik’s Cube routine and holds a paper bag upside down “to prove it’s empty” (even though he is obviously holding back a second cube), the audience doesn’t protest as they normally should. They think to themselves, “Gee, it’s so cute that his dad thinks we don’t know he is holding the extra cube in the bag.” They think, “You didn’t fool us, but we like you so we will give you the benefit of the doubt.” Stephen tells me, “The audience is polite and claps. He’s Nate’s dad. Poor guy.”
When he first joined Nate in theaters, Stephen initially felt he should have bigger props. “In the beginning, out of guilt, I felt I had to change the material to play bigger. But then I realized that with the cameras, we can focus in.” So Stephen decided to perform the tricks he had been doing for his whole life, including his hilarious Straitjacket Escape, Sponge Balls in a net, and the Gumball Machine, which he has closed all his shows with for the past 20 years.
Stephen also didn’t have to worry about angles when they played theaters with traditional stages. “We faced one camera and stayed that way the whole time.” When they started playing arenas, Stephen had to learn to perform in the round. His set stayed mostly the same, only now he had to learn to aim at the cameras at the right moments and load the gumball machine in the round.
His set now includes a borrowed bill switch, a chosen card vanish, a borrowed ring vanish, and the gumball machine, from which come the bill, the card, and the spectator’s borrowed ring. He does a bill switch for 20,000 people! Performing close-up magic for 20,000 people is only possible with the help of massive video screens and a multi-camera setup.
The impressive multi-camera set up allows Stephen to perform material he’s been presenting for most of his career / Photo on left by Noah Stroupe; photo on right by David Kaye
There are four camera operators spaced equally, creating four corners. There is tape on the round stage indicating where they are, so no matter which way Nate or Stephen faces, one of the cameras can pick up a perfect shot of them facing the audience. There are also two unmanned cameras mounted on the stage for close-up shots of Stephen’s hands during the bill switch.
Stephen, Nate, and their warm-up act, Julian McCullough, travel to shows together with all the video equipment. (So does Stephen’s daughter Abigail, who is also his manager.) This includes massive screens and cameras, along with the camera operators and director. By using the same TV crew at every show, the director knows how to shoot Stephen’s performance. Because it’s always the same, Stephen knows how to face the cameras at the most important moments of the act: when he does the bill switch, when the spectator holds up her signed card, even when the spectator puts the quarter into the gumball machine and turns the handle.
“I traveled with Nate and did all the shows until SNL changed everything,” Stephen told me. After the SNL appearances, Nate’s career took another leap. He spent his days fielding movie requests and project offers. Stephen said, “Now he’s in meetings with people all day. Everywhere we went it seemed like he was always in meetings. I ended up hanging out with the opening act instead of Nate. I didn’t sign up for that. It just got to where we didn’t have the time that I was looking to spend together.” So Stephen started joining Nate less often.
These days Stephen will open for Nate at special events, like at Madison Square Garden, Red Rocks Amphitheater, and Radio City Music Hall, as well as in Louisville and Nashville. And he loves joining Nate in Las Vegas. “In Vegas we do eight shows a week, three times a year.” The Wynn was very supportive of Nate early on and Nate has always been a very loyal person. So he only performs at the Wynn in Vegas, he takes good care of his relationship with Fallon, and works with the same opener at every show.
Stephen is really proud of Nate, as any dad would be. After Stephen does his set, he introduces Nate and often tears up. It’s very endearing and the crowd eats it up. “Then Nate has to perform after I get emotional,” he said. “His favorite thing to do is to come up and say, ‘That’s not my dad.’”
What is it like to perform magic for 20,000 people? “I used to think, ‘All these people are going to be watching me!’ But I’m not so afraid anymore, I just go,” he said. It eases his mind when he realizes, “People aren’t watching me. If I have my back to them they are looking at the screen.” He continued, “To me it’s no different to performing for 200 people because that’s all I’m really seeing. Just the faces of the people sitting closest to the stage. But I know enough to look up to make it look like I’m looking at everybody.”
And the laughter he gets from the audience in a room that big feels different. “It takes a little time for the laughter to roll in.” But it doesn’t affect his timing, “because I like to speak slowly and so does Nate.” Yes, both performers take their time when speaking onstage, to great effect: part Southern drawl, part Tennessee accent, part comedic timing. Nate has Stephen’s timing; he is willing to wait. He is not afraid to be silent.
I asked Stephen how Nate’s success has changed his life: “[Nate’s] success has highly affected my life.” Stephen’s fee has grown since Nate became famous; suffice it to say when the client finds out Nate’s fee, Stephen’s fee seems like a bargain, so some people hire Stephen instead. “I am working much more than I want to, and I am making much more money than I ever did.”
Every private client that hires Stephen these days knows he is Nate’s dad. “I get hired because of that.” Though people older than 55 don’t always know who Nate is. “I have jokes about him: ‘He has a movie coming out and a book coming out. Please buy it. Because he still owes me money.’”
At the same time, Stephen has these strange weeks. “I did MSG for 20,000 people and then the next show was a house party for 18 people,” he said. That must be a very weird thing to go through. He has a joke for that scenario too. He says, “I just came here from Madison Square Garden. And now we are here for 18 people, so you can see the direction my career is going.”
Stephen still performs regularly at his local comedy club, Zanies, which is a much smaller room. “I do a residency at Zanies. I still love performing for 100 people…. I can make fun of people and everyone knows each other and they love it.” (Unlike in arenas where Stephen makes fun of people but sometimes it doesn’t go over as well.)
With all this fame for Nate, I asked Stephen which celebrity he was most excited to meet backstage. He told me it was Jimmy Fallon, because he wanted to thank him for all the support he gave Nate early on. “Nate was on his way up but Fallon really accelerated it.” Fallon said in interviews that Nate is his favorite comedian; Jim Gaffigan and Jerry Seinfeld said the same thing. But it was Fallon and The Tonight Show that were instrumental in getting Nate the exposure he needed.
“Nathan has opened a lot of doors for me,” Stephen said. (He always calls his son Nathan, which is what he called him growing up.) One big door Nate opened is Stephen’s opportunity to shoot his own comedy magic TV special.
In 2023, Nate started Nateland Entertainment, a production company specializing in clean comedians. The company finds and nurtures them and then produces their TV specials. Stephen’s three children—Nate, Derek, and Abigail—will produce his special, which will be promoted as “by Nate’s dad.” When Nate announced the taping of the special on his podcast, the two live shows sold out in 24 hours.
Even though Stephen has performed all this material for decades, he still rehearsed a lot for the shoot. He filled in for Mac King for a week to run the special, and Mac contributed a lot by helping with blocking. Stephen also had to practice performing the tricks using royalty-free music instead of the tracks he has used forever. This took a lot of adjusting.
Stephen assembled a team of magician friends to help him on the weekend before the shoot. Taylor Hughes, Pat Hazel, Rick Merrill, and Ken Scott all flew to Nashville for a few days. When the group convened, they realized something important needed to be changed.
In his usual show, Stephen does a few tricks that don’t immediately have a climax. The bill switch, selected card, and borrowed ring don’t resolve until later in the show when they all come out of the gumball machine. But on TV, if Stephen keeps failing to resolve these tricks, people might change the channel. So they had to change the order.
The special was shot in early November in a beautiful, old theater in Nashville. They always shoot a special twice so that you can pick the best parts from each show. Having a son who has shot six specials himself is really helpful when it’s time to shoot your own special.
Nate’s advice was to do the first show as written, without a lot of ad-libbing. Just do a solid show. Then if he nailed that one, in the second show he could relax and have more fun with ad-libs and with his volunteers. That is exactly what Stephen did and the taping went great.
The tricks Stephen performed are all his original routines from a lifetime in magic. His set list included Torn and Restored Newspaper, Sponge Balls, $100 Dollar Bill Switch, I Hate Kids (a funny wallet monte Stephen released), Gumball Machine, and the Straitjacket.
Though Stephen did the Straitjacket in the special, he doesn’t do it in his shows anymore. “My biggest injury in magic was from the Straitjacket. I had a guy who was drunk,” he told me. “This guy flung me around and threw me off the stage. Then I had to have surgery. It took me time to learn to control the spectator.”
As of this writing the special has yet to be sold, but Stephen is hoping for an early 2026 release. Nate’s first movie will come out around the same time; he wrote and stars in The Breadwinner with Mandy Moore.
I asked Stephen a question I imagine all relatives of comedians get asked: How do you feel about Nate talking about you in his stand-up act? “That never upset any of us,” he told me. “We see it as a badge of honor. It’s all true, so it’s OK. As a family we don’t care.” (Nate had a joke about his wife’s mother once; she didn’t like it so he changed it to be about his own mother instead.)
In 2023, Stephen accidentally left food cooking on his stove, then left the house to play golf, and burned down his kitchen. He lost his original straitjacket and many magic props. He and his wife had to live with Nate for six months while the kitchen was being rebuilt. His wife suggested that they should leave him money for food. Stephen told her, “No, we don’t have to leave him money, he owes us. If we weren’t as dumb as we were, he wouldn’t be as famous.”
Photos by Noah Stroupe are courtesy of Nateland