Bergenfield magician Anna DeGuzman finishes second on NBC's America's Got Talent
It was a loss — but hardly a defeat — for Bergenfield magician Anna DeGuzman, who blazed a thrilling trail through four months of "America's Got Talent," only to come up just short of votes on Wednesday's season finale to finish in second place.
It was Adrian Stoica with his dog Hurricane, one of the other 11 acts that competed in the finale, who will walk away with the $1 million cash prize and a one-off slot at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas.
But being on "America's Got Talent," she says, is itself a win-win.
"I don't think there is losing," DeGuzman said. "I think I've already won."
Not only is she part of a franchise that has racked up over 3.8 billion video views, and 26 million YouTube subscribers to date, but the contestants have a history of doing well — win or lose.
Magician Shin Lim, a previous AGT winner (and Guzman's idol) parlayed his fame into his own show in Las Vegas. But so did another AGT magician, Piff the Magic Dragon, who didn't win.
That's the magic of television — and DeGuzman has finessed it as neatly as she does the playing cards that she uses to perform astounding tricks of numerology and prognostication.
On Tuesday's decisive performance — the one viewers voted on — she astonished again. She made the Queen of Hearts, chosen randomly by host Terry Crews, appear not only in the sealed envelopes of judges Simon Cowell, Heidi Klum, Howie Mandel and Sofia Vergara, but also in the envelopes of every audience member.
She topped that by lining up the seemingly random cards Crews had chosen — two of hearts, six of diamonds, nine of spades, two of diamonds, three of hearts, 10 of clubs, and 10 of spades — to form the exact date and moment of their broadcast: 26/9/23 at 10:10 p.m. "Check the clock, because it's exactly 10:10, America!" she told the TV audience.
"I wanted to have everybody involved, including the people at home, to make it one of my biggest performances ever," she said.
The real magic of her performance style, she says, is in making something as small and intimate as cards "read" big — for an audience of thousands in a theater, or millions on a broadcast. She's not the kind of magician who makes the Statue of Liberty disappear. Nor does she want to be.
"I specialize in close-up," she said. "That's how I started. Doing street magic for people. Stuff with coins, money. Literally any small object you can think of. I love that kind of magic because it's intimate. I always felt that big stage illusions have a disconnect with the audience. When it's some big unfamiliar object on stage that [the magician] is doing something with, they're suspicious. But when it's an ordinary object that people are familiar with, they can appreciate it."
Certainly, DeGuzman's residency on AGT is a big win for female magicians — underrepresented in the field.
And it's a big win for DeGuzman on a personal level. It's brought her closer to her mother Tess, an emigrant from the Philippines who brought up DeGuzman as an only child in a single-parent household. During the broadcasts, she was shown in the audience.
"This has been very bonding," DeGuzman said. "My mom doesn't really know this world. She's always been a very normal conservative woman. She would never do anything like what I do. She's not a performer. She's not a singer. For her this is so new, being on TV. She's never been on TV in her life. I'm used to being on cameras, on social media. This is the first time I feel she's kind of been brought into my world."
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Anna DeGuzman of NJ loses AGT finale with magic acts
