A new eight-part podcast Wild Things explores the crazy and extraordinary story of Siegfried and Roy. The magician pair electrified Las Vegas for over 50 years, performing 30,000 shows to 50 million people and earning over $1bn in ticket sales. But their life was often more complicated than the mind-boggling illusions that formed the shows.

“As a child of the 80s,” says podcast creator Steven Leckart in an interview with The Guardian, “Siegfried and Roy have always loomed large for me. And no one has ever properly examined their story – or the attack – in depth.

Although there are only eight parts to the podcast, there is no shortage of interesting tales surrounding the famous pairing. Stories include counter-terrorism police doing background checks on a tiger, the mental health of soldiers, and features an investigation into whether a beehive hairdo can be used as a weapon? That's not to mention one of the pairing nearly dying on stage from an animal attack!

New Podcasts Explores Stranger That Truth Story Of Siegfried and Roy

Wild Things takes listeners through the journey of the pairing, starting in Germany. Both Siegfried and Roy’s fathers were violent, rage-filled alcoholics, scarred by years of fighting as Nazi soldiers.

Roy's love of animals started when he adopted a stray dog to protect him and his mother from his father's violence. Siegfried became fascinated with magic after watching an entertainer swallow razor blades during a street performance. The duo met as teenagers on a German cruise ship where Roy was a bellboy and Siegfried a steward with a part-time magic show. Roy was unimpressed by the trend of making rabbits disappear from hats, so instead stole a cheetah from a zoo and included it in his evening act.

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Their big break came in 1966 when Grace Kelly invited the pairing to perform at her annual Red Cross Gala in Monte Carlo. Their cheetah fled through a celebrity-packed crowd into the kitchens. When Siegfried casually jumped off the stage, the crowd assumed it was all part of the act. Within a few years, they regularly appeared in Las Vegas, before earning a headline slot with the city’s first full-length magic show.

“They were hyperbole manifested,” says Leckart. “Everything about them was bigger, was louder, was dialed up to 11, which is a deliberate Spinal Tap reference. But what kept them going for so many years was their incredible skill and the way they progressed their show.”

No Shortage of Material About Eccentric Duo And Their Animals

The interest in Sigfried and Roy isn't just about their background and celebrity friends. Wild Things also handles the doubts about their handling of wild animals and whether they treated them appropriately.

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“We do go – in-depth – into the question of animal welfare and safety in a subsequent episode,” explains Leckart. “What we uncover is not just shocking, but really disturbing.” A panther burst a waterbed after being locked in a bedroom during a party and two tigers were stolen from a truck outside a deli, but these are just two wild tales.

Of course, the podcast deals with the 2003 attack where a white tiger bites Roy through the neck and severely injures him. Leckart’s team discover that the investigation entered a truly bizarre territory, including animal activists, homophobes in the audience, ultrasonic devices and a woman near the stage with a large beehive hairdo. The podcast even has a theory that something more sinister was behind this so-called accident.

Sadly the showmen weren't involved in the new podcast. Roy died of Covid in May 2020 at the age of 75 and Siegfried if pancreatic cancer the following January at 81.

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