PENN JILLETTE FINDS NEW IDENTITY AS GAME SHOW HOST

Comedic magician Penn Jillette hosts the new game show Identity on NBC.

You can win half a million dollars simply by matching 12 strangers to their correct profession on the new game show Identity hosted by comedic magician Penn Jillette on NBC. Anyone from an Olympic Gold medalist all the way to a contortionist can be subjects on the show.

Penn says we all make snap judgments about stereotypes so why not turn that into cold hard cash?

“Game shows are really cool but a lot of them are just mathematical chance. And this one I thought was a lot more interesting because it does have that weird sociological element. Everybody plays this game Identity all the time. Everybody walks into an airport, a coffee shop, anywhere. You look around and say, ‘I wonder what they do for a living?’ I wonder what their story is? And this is nice because you look at them and say, ‘I wonder who was the kidney donor and who was the fireman?’”

Penn is familiar with cold readings, taking guesses about people which he’s done in his magic show but he says Identity consults the experts.

“We’ve had people like an FBI profiler who’s one of our experts that the people can ask. We have a profiler and body language experts, oncologists; these people are really good at it. It’s astonishing how good you can get at just looking at someone and telling what they do for a living or a characteristic that’s very important to them. We’ve had players really get a lot of money who can just look at people and say, ‘that’s the one who weighs 152 pounds.’”

Identity premieres tonight at 9PM on NBC.