Criss Angel on his blackout: ‘I really didn’t know what was going on’

“Mindfreak Live!” magician Criss Angel is talking candidly since blacking out Friday during his attempted straitjacket escape and being rushed to a hospital — the scary incident left him unconscious onstage in front of an audience that included his 82-year-old mother, new girlfriend, pop singer Belinda, and his 2-year-old son Johnny Crisstopher, who all watched horrified from their seats.

Criss passed out with just seconds remaining on a 2-minute countdown clock that ticks during his escape from the padlocked, belted straitjacket. In 2009, Criss talked with Oprah Winfrey about the escape demonstration:

I learned exclusively that Criss should’ve been celebrating a new, multimillion-dollar contract with Foxwoods Casino, according to insiders, but instead was being pumped with fluids for dehydration at Spring Valley Hospital while his mom, son and girlfriend waited in the emergency room area.

This morning when he had an opportunity to talk about the incident, he told me: “I’m doing great now. I’m doing fantastic. I was very excited about the success that I had coming back with a vengeance and all the sold-out shows, but it became a crazy, crazy situation. Friday night was one extreme losing consciousness, then the next day it was a complete antithesis of what transpired. I had to redo the demonstration.

“I redid it because I had to do it mentally because as a person I’m very competitive, not only with other people but myself. I was very upset that it happened. I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t concerned that I could do it because I’ve been doing it for so many years. I was really frustrated that all of the folks who bought tickets to the show only saw 15 minutes of it.

“I felt so bad that they canceled the show after I blacked out. I wanted to come back to do another show immediately because I know how that is, to buy tickets to a theater, plan a trip to Las Vegas and people came to the Luxor to see it. Then, unfortunately, they don’t get to see the whole experience, so I was really frustrated about that.”

Criss told me that he didn’t know he was going unconscious. One second he was twisting in the straitjacket to free himself against the clock, the next he passed out. “I just blanked out. I had no idea whatsoever what was going on.

“I literally was going up in the jacket I remember, and the next thing I know, I woke up, and I thought I was dreaming. The next thing, I woke up, and 50 people were around me with paramedics putting an IV in me and cold towels on me. They put me on a stretcher. It was just a crazy, surreal experience.

I asked Criss what was his first thought when he came to on the stretcher. “Obviously if you just black out suddenly, there’s no buildup, so you don’t say to yourself, ‘Something is going wrong. I can fix it.’ I had no idea what was going on. I have all these cold towels on my head. People had ripped my shirt off and started putting stuff in my arm. What the hell is going on? Was it a dream?

“I really didn’t know if it was a dream. I really didn’t know what was going on. Everything was muffled and sweaty. It was a very surreal experience. It took me a little bit of time to grasp what happened and figure out what was going on because I didn’t know what had happened. It lasted about 3 or 4 minutes while I was on the floor.

“It’s the first time in my history that I’d ever passed out. Maybe just for 1 second when I was a kid, but nothing like this. I’ve been doing this escape demonstration since I was a teenager. I’ve hung upside down for quite some time and spun around rapidly while hanging suspended midair. This was the first time in my career that anything like that ever happened to me.”

I reminded Criss that he injured his shoulder when he performed the same straitjacket escape during the filming of a Times Square TV special. “Yeah, I ripped my bicep then off my bone with a complete tear to my rotator cuff right in front of thousands of people. That was really crazy.”

Was there a comparison between the two incidents? Said Criss: “The one in Times Square was certainly painful. This one on Friday was a bigger surprise. It shows just how real what I do is — how my life really goes on the line each and every show, and I have 450 of them a year.

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“I really take risks with what I do onstage to bring to the public the most spectacular, amazing, mind-blowing, revolutionary magic experience you could possibly have. I think that’s also why we have huge audiences night after night and why we’re so successful. No one as an audience member could get that experience in any other magic show on the planet.”

I asked Criss if he had any fears trying to do it again for his audience just 24 hours later. “No. I work well under pressure and stress. I knew that we had to get it right immediately. I knew that people came and some of them just to see that specific demonstration, so I was really, really pumped up. But I started the show probably about 10 minutes late because I had to be in the right frame of mind before the show started.

“Once I got myself in that right frame of mind, then we began. I had a headache the whole show. The audience was excited, and I was pumped up to do it. So now I’ve done it for two nights for three shows since we had two sold-out shows last night, too. I do my best work under pressure. I’m very competitive, and that’s the reason I had to go back as fast as I could to conquer it. I’m just very grateful for all the concerns and outpouring of love from my fans around the world.”

Criss said that his mother and son had watched the stunt gone wrong. “Yes, they were watching when I blacked out and lay unconscious onstage,” he told me. “There have been skeptics saying it was just for publicity, but that’s absolutely ridiculous because I would never put my 82-year-old mother and my 2-year-old son through that experience. That’s not something I would ever do.

“The audience saw what happened. They witnessed it for themselves. When you hang upside down and have that much blood rushing to your head and you haven’t eaten, you’re dehydrated, you haven’t slept much, it essentially took a toll. When I was admitted to the hospital, the doctors pumped a bunch of fluid into me. They wanted to keep me in overnight for observation. They wanted to do a brain scan.

“I refused and just wanted to get home. I had to sign a document basically saying that the doctor at the hospital wasn’t responsible if something should happen to me. I just went back to the waiting room in emergency where my son and my mom were waiting. They were far more concerned about me than I was.”

His production team told me that instead of being at a hospital, Criss should’ve been celebrating a new, multimillion-dollar contract with Foxwoods 140 miles north of Manhattan. Criss starts the first two weeks of the deal in November and December.

He will use his time off from the show at The Luxor to fulfill the dates this fall and in 2018 for the new Foxwoods contract. One of his production crew told me, “He’ll work on his off time from The Luxor to fulfill the Foxwoods contract. He’ll be working on his breaks.”

I also persuaded Criss to talk to me about his new romance with Spanish-born Mexican singer Belinda. Criss and the Latina pop princess haven’t talked about their romance to the media except for their own tweets and Instagram messages to fans.

Said Criss: “We’re in love and very happy. She’s the love of my life.” Belinda, who was sitting beside Criss for our phone chat, leaned in to say: “It’s the same for me. He is the love of my life.” Added Criss: “She is the love, the only love of my life.

“I never have experienced the magic of love like this in my life. It’s really amazing and beautiful. I have never felt this way before. I have never felt love, never felt this happy before. It’s just an amazing experience. Not only is she the most beautiful woman that I have ever seen, but she’s also so beautiful on the inside. She’s my first real soul mate. We are both very fortunate to have found each other.”