I asked a witch to make my best friend obsessed with me

There are a lot of ways to make sure your best friend truly cares about you. I chose to find a witch, steal a used pen off his desk and bury a chicken heart in a box with my name pinned to it. This week’s film is a bit different than most of what we make, partially because the person at the centre of it is one of my closest mates but also because it sets out to see once and for all whether magic really works. It’s out now, and I’m not gonna lie - it was a fun one to make.

Why witchcraft

HUMAN has always been about me trying to understand worlds and beliefs that aren’t my own, whether that’s a cartel member or a trad wife. Witchcraft felt like a natural one, because all around the world people are buying spells from witches, for money, for love, for revenge, and the numbers are growing. I’ll admit I’m a sceptic. I don’t really believe in magic but I’ve always been fascinated by those who do. I really wanted to make a film where I met someone who was convinced they had magical abilities, and try to understand them.

That meant finding a witch who was confident in what they do. Nina calls herself the Leigh Witch and does witchcraft professionally. She used to work in asset management, started practising quietly on the side, and when her contract ended decided to go full time. She now earns significantly more as a witch than she ever did in finance. Her prices run from £12 for a name in a jar up to £350 for her most expensive working, and for a monthly fee she’ll teach you to do it yourself. She gets asked for death curses all the time, which she turns down. Her most popular product by a distance is the obsession spell. So, obviously, I asked her for one.

Why my best friend

I did consider a love spell, but I have a wife, and she’d have been annoyed. I briefly considered making someone very rich obsessed with me and then asking them for money. That felt like it may have some legal consequences... So, in the end I landed on Ben Lister, who shoots and edits some of our documentaries, was a groomsman at my wedding and is one of my closest friends, mainly because I assumed he was the least risky person to make obsessed with me. I like him, my wife likes him, and he technically works for me, which felt useful.

Nina was not remotely unsure about any of this. She was confident it would work, and the only question she had for me was how far I wanted it to go, because she’s had clients end up with stalkers. She warned me that obsession isn’t love and that it can get very annoying, very quickly. I told her I wanted him obsessed for life, and she said we were going with the big guns.

Ben thought he was filming a behind-the-scenes interview about Zandland. What he was actually at the centre of was two months of hidden cameras in the edit suite, a fake interview run by Freddie, a dinner near my house with cameras hidden in coffee cups, a cup of enchanted tea I made him myself, and a box containing a chicken heart with my name pinned to it, which the team and I buried one morning before he came into work. To link the spell to him I needed a personal object, so I snuck into the office after he’d gone home and took a pen and an empty can off his desk. I’m aware of how that sounds.

For members: an extended scene

Alongside the film there’s an extended scene for members. It’s a conversation between me and Ben Lister that didn’t make it into the film, and you can watch a free preview below. If you’ve been thinking about joining, this is a good week for it.

What I actually took from it

I won’t tell you whether it worked. You’ll have to watch, and the reveal, when I finally explain to Ben what’s been going on, is my favourite scene. But the thing I didn’t expect was how much I’d end up thinking about belief rather than magic.

Nina told me that around three quarters of her clients are American, and that a lot of them come to her because they feel the world has stopped making sense and they want something they can control. She describes herself as being in the business of belief. When I pushed her on whether the spells might be placebo, she said the client has to believe too, and that their behaviour changes because of it. That’s an interesting answer, because it’s true, and it also quietly shifts the responsibility for the result away from the witch.

I did try to believe. I created a ring of salt whilst sprinkling catnip over candles and telling a chicken heart to answer my calls, and I meant it as much as I could. I came out thinking that regardless whether the magic is real, the thing underneath it is what’s interesting... a space where someone feels they have a bit of control over their life. Whether that’s worth £350 is a question I’ll leave to you.

Kingpins

Kingpins Mexico has had a huge response so far, over 810,000 views in four days, which is a lot more than we expected for a show that’s currently only available in the US, UK and Canada. We’re working on getting it available everywhere, so if you’ve been locked out, bear with us.

Kingpins: UK drops next week, and it’s a very different film. I usually avoid filming with drug dealers in Britain, because it’s a bit too close to home and a lot easier for them to find me if they don’t like the result, so I was nervous about this one. There are no tigers this time. Instead there’s a small town in England, the kind with lovely stone buildings and an old industrial past, where a man I’m calling Mr M runs a class A wholesale operation out of an ordinary terraced house. He’s had the staircase taken out so no one can get up to him. He talks me through his business like he’s running a cash and carry, cooks crack in front of me, and tells me his father thinks he’s a scumbag.

What makes it different from Mexico is that the scale is smaller and the sadness is closer to home. The people being used along the way, like the heroin user working for Mr M in exchange for his next hit, or the vulnerable tenants whose flats get quietly taken over by gangs, are people you’ve probably walked past. By the end, Mr M and I are sat in a forest having a conversation I never expected to have with him. Of the three Kingpins eps, it’s the one that’s stayed with me most.

That’s it for this week. If you watch the witch film, spare a thought for Ben Lister, who may still be thinking of me right now.

Ben Z