It was a working retreat. Copperfield isn't the kind of guy who sits in a beach chair sipping pina coladas. "You got that right. I'm not happy unless something is being created," he says on a day he was leading zoologists to a toucan habitat he's building for the resort.

He also is at work on "secret tunnels and passageways. Everything you'd expect an illusionist to do on an island."

But it really was a day at the beach compared to now. Copperfield is back for his holiday season at the MGM Grand, where he plans two shows a day, three on Saturday and four on Thanksgiving.

We hadn't talked on the record since 2006. That's because the FBI raided Copperfield's warehouse on Russell Road near the Strip in October 2007, investigating allegations of sexual misconduct. He never was charged but subsequently was sued by the Seattle woman making the allegations.

Most everything he will say about her is on a Web site: DavidCopperfieldsets therecordstraight.com. The site claims the woman has "a history of lying" to law enforcement and that the lawsuit is an "extortion for money, plain and simple."

But the 53-year-old wasn't the most chatty magician on the planet after that raid, and in the past two years, the list of stuff to ask him about has grown:

1. How did it feel to have his character questioned? To get bad press when he usually doesn't?

"I'm just a target for that. Unfortunately, the court allows that kind of thing to come out. For years, it was about me and a lady I was dating (model Claudia Schiffer) who had as much money as I did, that I was paying her to be my girlfriend. We used to laugh, it was so ridiculous, but it had a life of its own."

2. Did he (and David Blaine) really steal a guy's "godly powers" in order to do their magic, as Minnesota plaintiff Christopher Roller alleged?

Everyone laughed, but "that lasted for years and years and cost me lots of money."

3. Did Michael Jackson really ask him to work on the London concerts?

"We never even spoke about it," Copperfield says, adding reports that the two fell out over money to the list of wrongs done by the media. When the magician did help Jackson with illusions on a past tour, "No money changed hands. I did it as a friend."

4. The MGM performance schedule is ambitious, but the "greatest hits" format suggests that creatively, he might be stuck in a holding pattern.

Inside the warehouse, "a whole team of people is working on new exciting things," he says. "When I'm ready to launch some new stuff, I'll probably sneak it into the show and not call you."

5. Another Las Vegas show claimed it would reinvent magic and didn't. Does that mean it can't be done?

"Everything new I'm doing reinvents what I'm doing," he says. Because of his annual CBS specials, "For 21 years I was creating an hour of new material a year that was actually performable onstage, that you could actually do in front of people. That process gives me a pretty big catalog, a warehouse full of material that's tried and tested, piece by piece. I didn't fake anything."

6. With the Masked Magician exposing the traditional illusions on TV, is magic going to have to find a new path?

"I always liken those exposure shows to a car accident on the highway. People are curious. ... You slow down and look and then go, 'Oh, I wish I didn't see that.' A peek behind the curtain is really a disappointing experience.

"Magic is the basis of it all, what they're coming to see. But when they go home, it's really (about) the feeling that I give them."

7. How's the assistant, identified at the time only by his first name (Brandon), who was seriously injured by a giant industrial fan onstage last year?

"He's doing great. He's back in the show. ... It was really quite devastating. Just in case you think this stuff is fake, it really is dangerous."

Years ago, "I cut the tip of my finger off and had to have it sewed back on. ... I was doing a rope trick. My finger was sitting on top of the scissors. I said, 'Ladies and gentleman, I've cut my finger off.' And they started to applaud."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.