Utahns Tyce Nielsen and Mary Ellen Wolfe made the finals of “America’s Got Talent” in 2018, but they didn’t take home the title or the $1 million prize. Yet the trapeze artists/acrobats who perform as Duo Transcend turned out to be huge winners after all.
“It changed our lives,” Nielsen told The Salt Lake Tribune — first, in a way they had hoped, and then in a way doctors had told Nielsen to never expect.
The married couple almost decided not to audition for the NBC talent competition nearly two years ago.
“We had so many things that were getting in the way and kind of telling us not to go on the show,” said Nielsen. “We had been traveling a lot and we hadn’t seen our son [then-2-year-old Jaxx] in a month and a half. We flew to L.A. to do the first round, and the whole time we were there, we were just, like, ‘Why are we doing this? What if it goes wrong?’”
As it turned out, however, their run on the show carried them to the finals that season and won them an invitation to compete in “America’s Got Talent: Champions,” which begins Monday at 7 p.m. on Ch. 5.
(Photo courtesy of Tyce Nielsen and Mary Wolfe) Mary Wolfe, Jaxx and Tyce Nielsen recently celebrated Christmas in Utah.
Nielsen and Wolfe travel the country, performing at a variety of venues. Before they appeared on “AGT,” they’d have to leave Jaxx behind with family members when they were on the road “because there wasn’t money in the budget to have a babysitter or pay for him to fly with us. That was a bummer.”
They went on “AGT” hoping that the exposure would help their careers and make it possible for them to bring their son with them. And work picked up. They’ve performed with Cirque du Soleil and at a variety of corporate functions.
“People saw our story on ‘AGT’ and they liked it. And so they wanted us to come perform for their parties,” he said. “It opened the doors for us to continue to succeed and grow in our performing.”
And it definitely benefited the family finances. Now, “there’s a much bigger budget for us, so we can fly our son with us. We can have a babysitter with us,” Nielsen said. “It means so much to us that we get to have Jaxx travel with us.”
And Jaxx, who’s about to turn 4, is loving it. “Airplanes are his favorite thing. He just thinks it’s great,” Nielsen said. “The stuff that he sees on a daily basis, I mean, most most people don’t ever get to see in their whole lifetime.”
That’s the “America’s Got Talent” bonus they were hoping for. The other one came as a complete surprise — a doctor who treats Nielsen’s rare genetic disorder, keratoconus, contacted them and offered his services.
“It’s a disease where your body attacks your corneas,” Nielsen said, eventually causing blindness. He’s legally blind in his right eye and has limited vision in his left, which makes the stunts Duo Transcend performs that much more astonishing.
The Los Angeles eye specialist “reached out to us and said, ‘Hey, I saw you on the show and I’m a doctor that helps correct these things,’” Nielsen said. “I had no idea that this doctor was out there. I had been to multiple doctors throughout the country. I’ve spoken to many of them. And every single one of the doctors told me that there’s nothing they could do.”
The L.A. doctor performed a procedure that “stopped the progression of the disease.” It didn’t improve Nielsen’s vision, but it stopped it from getting worse.
“My whole life I’ve grown up with the understanding that it will progress until the point where I no longer can see, and then I would have to get a full cornea transplant,” he said. And that, he added, is “very risky. Most of the time your body will reject it. There’s a lot of scarring. There’s a ton of healing. So it’s just something that I didn’t want to do.”
And the L.A. doctor offers another procedure “that would actually help correct my vision,” Nielsen said. But he’s waiting for “when we have a little bit of down time” because that procedure “is a little bit more invasive and it takes more time to heal.” And with Duo Transcend’s career taking off — with a return trip to “America’s Got Talent” on the table — he’s been willing to postpone that.
Wolfe and Nielsen are returning for the “Champions” edition of “AGT,” which features winners, finalists and “fan-favorite acts” from past seasons, as well as winners and finalists from other editions of the show in other countries.
Executive producer Simon Cowell is joined on the judging panel by Howie Mandel, Heidi Klum and Alesha Dixon, a longtime judge on “Britain’s Got Talent.” Terry Crews hosts.
When they’re not performing, Wolfe and Nielsen are getting ready to move to Las Vegas, where there’s more work — and less need for them to travel. “We’ve had our feelers out about where we want to be in Vegas, and we’re in the process of making that happen,” Nielsen said. And they took time to ramp up their act for their return to “America’s Got Talent.”
Yes, they will be wearing blindfolds for part of the act as they perform high above the stage floor.
If you saw them perform on “AGT” in 2018, it’s difficult to believe they could possibly be any more fit. And it’s all but impossible to believe they could come up with stunts that could top what they did in their first go-round — including when Wolfe slipped from Nielsen’s grasp as they were high above the stage on the trapeze, falling frighteningly to the floor.
She was not seriously injured — just bruised — and Wolfe told the judges she wanted to immediately try the stunt again.
“It means so much to us,” Wolfe told them. “It’s been such a long road to get here.” The judges, however, weren’t having it.
“We actually both felt even more nervous going back to ‘Champions’ just ’cause we knew what that meant,” Nielsen said — competing with top acts not just from the United States, but other countries.
“We knew it would be much more competitive. It was actually really, really nerve-wracking, and we were super nervous but really excited. These opportunities are really cool to have.”
“We’re just going to do our best,” Wolfe said, “and hope that it goes well.”
