The E in E! is entertainment and it is intended as an entertainment channel.
Well, sure, but by that same token John Oliver is entertainment too. If we say that John Oliver is intended as comedy but also provides factual information, we have to allow that Tyler Henry is intended as entertainment but also shows real clairvoyance.
Doing a thing has one connotation. Doing that same thing for an audience can have an entirely different connotation just by virtue of the audience being present. This is what undercuts the argument that Henry wouldn't be successful in Hollywood on a weekly television show unless he could really do what he says he can do. We have to keep the two disconnected. One can be successful in Hollywood doing literally anything, so long as people will watch or participate in it. The merits of the thing they're doing have to be studied separately from the fact that it attracts an audience.
The reason of course is because there are no real mediums.
And people don't really saw the lady in half either.
There are quite a number of ways to fake sawing the lady in half, or appearing to inflict other bodily trauma without really doing so. They're well known, so much so that one hardly has to delve into the tricks of magic to discover the age-old ones. They've become such a meme that there is a whole derivative branch of magic -- Penn & Teller do this a long -- based on pretending to use the old tricks but really using something entirely innovative.
And for TV magic, when the announcer says, "No camera tricks were used," what he really means is that all the camera tricks were used. The studio audience is completely in on it, too. Netflix's
Magic for Humans is probably the worst-case example. It's a working-strong production that claims to use raw footage and no actors. Except that they skimped and used a second-rate VFX house. And by the second episode they're making factual claims that can easily be verified as false. It's so bad people are wondering if it's a Poe.
The point is that if someone comes along and says he's
really sawing the lady in half, the history of such claims makes working strong here a non-starter. He may have a novel approach to the trick, and that's worth seeing, but he's not really doing what he claims to do. Same with Henry. He may have a novel approach, but he's not really talking to the dead. The history of such claims puts an elphantine burden of proof on Henry (and his defenders) to show he's not faking it.
Imagine having to prove that someone is cold reading. We can ensnare hot-readers pretty easily by the honeypot method. But if you're really good at cold reading, you're not doing anything more than having a conversation with someone who then subjectively concludes that you've met her standard of proof.
...on set work includes catering which is almost always limitless and very good.
A poorly-guarded craft services table is a guaranteed diet-buster. I had a sumptuous breakfast every day for a week simply by letting Aquabats use my offices as a location.
If keeping your mouth shut about a fraud medium means keeping a 100k+ year job (that's for 26 weeks by the way) who would say anything.
Which, sadly, has been a major factor in the #MeToo phenomenon. Those jobs are so hard to get and keep -- especially in Hollywood -- that the thermostat get set pretty high for the amount of illegal and unethical harassment people are willing to endure in them. The question is always asked, "Why didn't they come forward?" And the answer is that for each person who decides to make trouble over the star commenting on their bodily structure, there are about 2,000 others who will take the same job without complaining.
The industry is small and everyone knows everyone. Loose canons don't get hired - cause issues and you might as well move to Timbuktu.
The biggest problem I had branching out from STEM (as close to a pure meritocracy as you can get) into entertainment was figuring out that entertainment is almost entirely a relationship industry. It's not what you can do, it's who you know. Tyler Henry gets work probably as much for being an attractive, likable guy who gets along with the establishment as for any purported psychic ability he has. I've gotten design gigs without the people even seeing my portfolio, just on word of mouth and my knowing where to take the production designer for good local microbrews.
It doesn't matter whether the celebrity guests believe in clairvoyance, or whether they need to be put under NDA or follow a script. They don't have to take the gig. But if they do, the gig is the gig. You do what you're supposed to. Tyler Henry might be the flavor of the month, but if his show is where the eyeballs are right now, and you want those eyeballs on your face, you play along. If you pull a stunt, or decide to get all skeptical and blow the gig, all the booking agents know about it by the next day.
And in my town, there's only one credible talent agency for actors that get the big film and stage roles. If that agency drops you because you misbehaved at a gig, your career in my town is pretty much nonexistent after that. There is a great incentive for the guests to go along with the gist of the show whether they personally believe in it or not.
