Without knowing beforehand that someone was going to accidentally fall, the judges and audience on the latest season of America's Got Talent first had to sit through the unbearable tension - and then got a big fright - when the on-stage trapeze act of a married acrobat team, Duo Transcend went wrong.
In an extended clip released from the latest episode of the current season of the talent competition show, people can see how married acrobats, Tyce Nielsen - basically blind - and his wife Mary Wolfe-Nielsen decided to perform a daring act for the judges while their 2-year old son and Wolfe-Nielsen's mother sat in the studio audience.
Everything went fine up to a point.
Tyce - already struggling with his eyesight, put on a blindfold before the next move after the judges and audience gasped when his wife slipped through his hands and fell with a loud thud on the TV stage.
In the clip Wolfe-Nielsen gets up to show she's okay and waves to the shocked judges and audience. Then she says: "We would like to try the blindfold trick one more time".
Her husband Tyce suffers from Keratoconus, an eye disorder of the cornea, and is legally blind.
Guest judge Ken Jeong was the first of the flabbergasted judges to speak. "This isn't America's Got Perfection. It's called America's Got Talent. It's okay. It's okay."
Judge Simon Cowell said "I don't think there's ever been a singer on any of our competitions who's been note-perfect. It still doesn't make them not amazing. It makes them human. The consequences of this are slightly worse than slightly falling off key, where you nearly broke your neck."
Mary told the judges that the couple is struggling.
"We work on the road a lot and we have a 2-year old son and we have to leave him at home most of the time. So the dream is to be in Las Vegas so that our family can be together again."
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight the couple explained "that in practice everything went fine and then during the audition the worst possible thing happened."
"We wanted to step up our act so we added some new elements that we've never worked with before - the fire and the blindfold," said Mary.
"Because I can't see - I'm blindfolded, we have to go off of a verbal cue, so we have a music cue that I'm waiting for, but I also give Mary a verbal cue. I was kind of freaking out because I knew right away. I could feel her slipping through my hands and that feeling is just terrifying. It felt like it lasted so long," said Tyce.
