During ‘Now You See Me’ interview torrent, Isla Fisher recalls Vegas thrills

The first time she came to Las Vegas, she turned $10 into a fat stack of cash.

The second time, she was marched out of Aria in handcuffs.

Who knew Isla Fisher was such a baller?

Granted, the perp walk was for a scene in “Now You See Me,” the new movie in which the Aussie actress portrays an escape artist turned celebrated thief. But she was still able to get in touch with her inner bad girl without being splashed all over TMZ.

“That’s a great joke,” she says by phone, letting out a big, throaty laugh. “I wish you could say that I thought of that.”

The windfall, though, which came a decade ago, was very real.

“(I) had a bit of luck, if I don’t mind me saying, on the ‘black and red’ table.”

How good?

“Like properly good,” the redhead says of her roulette prowess. “Like, I started out with 10 bucks, and I ended out with 900. I cannot explain it. And listen to this, I didn’t move it off red. I didn’t. It just kept doubling, and I just kept leaving it. And then I had to quit, because I got so excited that I thought my luck would surely change.”

(Settle down, math nerds. Yes, repeatedly doubling $10 would have left her with either $640 or $1,280. But that doesn’t factor in any tips along the way.)

After bursting onto the scene in 2005’s “Wedding Crashers,” Fisher worked steadily for the next few years, romancing Andy Samberg in “Hot Rod” and Ryan Reynolds in “Definitely, Maybe” before taking the lead in “Confessions of a Shopaholic.”

Then she withdrew from the spotlight to focus on raising her daughters, 5-year-old Olive and 2-year-old Elula, with her husband, Sacha Baron Cohen.

She still performed the occasional voice-over work, in “Horton Hears a Who!,” “Rango” and “Rise of the Guardians.” But after several years where her primary role was that of a stay-at-home mom, Fisher has been thrust into what she calls “this tornado right now of interviews.”

She’s busily promoting not just “Now You See Me,” but “The Great Gatsby,” in which she portrays doomed mistress Myrtle Wilson. (She also can be seen in Netflix’s just-released fourth season of “Arrested Development.”)

The time off has done nothing to dilute the charm of the suddenly ubiquitous actress, who calls three days after the “Gatsby” press screening and two days after the one for “Now You See Me.”

“Oh, God, you’re sick of me,” Fisher complains in mock horror. “You don’t even wanna have this interview!”

That bit of self-deprecation is a far cry from the confidence of Henley Reeves, her “Now You See Me” character, who’s recruited along with a sleight-of-hand expert (Jesse Eisenberg), a mentalist/hypnotist (Woody Harrelson) and a spoon-bending pickpocket (Dave Franco) to form a magic supergroup known as “The Four Horsemen.”

In preparation for their roles, Eisenberg learned some card tricks, Harrelson kept trying to hypnotize his fellow actors, and Franco got so good at throwing playing cards he could use one to cut a banana in half.

Fisher, though, mostly became very adept at holding her breath.

She spent three days in a glass tank shooting her big escape scene and remembers director Louis Leterrier telling her she was staying underwater for three minutes at a time.

“I could be exaggerating this to make myself sound better,” she admits.

Unlike those of her co-stars, though, her talent doesn’t have as many real-world applications. It’s hard to use that, she offers, to entertain at parties.

And she doesn’t find the suggestion that, during arguments with her husband, she’s been holding her breath until she gets her way, nearly as funny as the TMZ bit.

For their professional debut, The Four Horsemen teleport an audience member from the MGM Grand to his bank in Paris, then empty its vaults and disperse the money throughout the crowd.

The MGM Grand scenes were filmed in New Orleans, thanks at least partly to Louisiana’s generous tax incentives. But the Las Vegas shoot made use of the Golden Gate and the Fremont Street Experience, the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse and Aria’s Sky Villas, in addition to Aria’s casino floor, where Fisher and her co-stars were taken away in handcuffs.

And, she confirms, trying to act amid the commotion of a casino is just as strange as it sounds.

“What’s great is that we could use all the real-life extras,” she adds. “We didn’t even have to use that many of our own extras, ’cause there were so many great people just gambling in the back of (the) shot.”

Another location, though, didn’t make the final cut.

The climax of “Now You See Me” was supposed to take place in the Neon Boneyard, Fisher says, but after filming there for half a day, they simply ran out of time. A proper conclusion, she says, would have taken at least three days to shoot.

But there’s always a chance it could turn up on the DVD.

“It looked so good. I saw the footage. It’s so magical,” she says. “You just wanna do a photo shoot out there and capture all the faded, rusted, old, incredible ... you know, it’s like being in another world. Another era.”

The cast did have enough time, though, for a night out seeing David Copperfield, who receives a “Magic Inspired By” credit on the movie.

Fisher had already filmed her magic scenes by then, so she wasn’t able to pick up any stage pointers from the MGM Grand headliner.

“But it was just good to go and see someone like Copperfield, who’s clearly at the top of his game and been doing it for a long time. They’re very amazing, those magic shows in Vegas.”

There also wasn’t enough time for more “back and red.”

Even if there were, there’s not much chance it could have topped the first time Fisher worked her magic on the game whose name she can’t quite recall.

“Oh my gosh, it was such a good moment,” she says of that first brush with Las Vegas.

“Honestly, I couldn’t believe it. People were looking at me at the table, like, ‘What? How’s that lady (doing that)?’ ”

Contact Christopher Lawrence at
clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.