Filipina-American Magician Anna DeGuzman Stuns Patriots
NFL players spend countless hours learning to recognize deception. They study disguised coverages, deceptive route combinations, and the smallest movements that might reveal what an opponent is planning. But as the New England Patriots prepared to open the 2026 season, Filipina-American magician Anna DeGuzman walked into one of their team meetings and reminded the room that even professional athletes can be fooled.
Standing before head coach Mike Vrabel, the Patriots’ roster, and coaching staff, DeGuzman opened her act with wide receiver DeMario “Pop” Douglas.
Douglas signed the ten of diamonds. DeGuzman marked the queen of hearts. The two cards were folded and placed between their lips, seemingly preventing either participant from making another move.
Seconds later, Douglas was holding DeGuzman’s signed card while she had his.
The exchange earned the expected combination of laughter, disbelief, and players looking toward one another for an explanation. DeGuzman, however, was only getting started.
For her next act, she turned the entire room into part of the performance. Players and coaches were given playing cards and instructed to tear them in half, mix the pieces, save one, and eliminate the rest by following a sequence of directions.
At the end, the remaining piece matched the half-card that had been set aside at the beginning.
The structure closely resembled “The Love Ritual,” an audience-participation routine created by Spanish magician Woody Aragón and previously performed by Penn & Teller.
In DeGuzman’s hands, however, it became more than a card demonstration. She transformed it into a shared experience for an entire NFL team.
That ability to make the people watching feel like part of the act is central to her appeal. DeGuzman’s magic does not usually depend on elaborate sets or the traditional image of a magician standing at a distance from the audience.
Her performances happen within arm’s reach, frequently using little more than playing cards, quick hands, and the reactions of the people around her.
Sports teams have become especially entertaining settings for that approach.
Long before her visit with the Patriots, DeGuzman performed for members of the Sacramento Kings during the team’s Media Day
She later visited a Las Vegas Raiders training camp, where she made a player’s ring disappear, and also performed for the New York Giants with quarterback Jaxson Dart serving as one of her assistants.
There is a natural tension when close-up magic meets elite sports. Professional athletes are accustomed to having command of their bodies and reacting faster than the people around them.
For a few moments, DeGuzman takes that sense of control away and their unfiltered reactions become part of the show.
DeGuzman began teaching herself through online videos, studying flourishes, and tricks frame by frame before uploading videos of her own.
At 16, she attended Cardistry-Con, a convention dedicated to the visual art of manipulating playing cards. Vanity Fair reported that she was the only female registrant at the gathering.
DeGuzman eventually combined technical ability with close-up illusion, humor, and an easy conversational style.
Viewers were able to watch her skills develop, while performances shared on social media began producing bookings and opportunities beyond the internet. She moved into the Los Angeles magic circuit and performed at venues including the Magic Castle.
Her largest breakthrough arrived in 2023 on Season 18 of America’s Got Talent. DeGuzman became the first female magician to reach the show’s finale and finished as the runner-up, behind Adrian Stoica and his dog Hurricane.
The exposure expanded her career beyond television. In 2024, she became the first artist to serve as an official brand ambassador for Bicycle Playing Cards. She later became Complex’s first magician-host through Interview With a Magician, a series that combines celebrity conversations with close-up performances.
Yet the story behind her is also distinctly Filipino
DeGuzman has acknowledged that answering where she is from can be complicated. She once summarized it on social media as being born in the United States, raised in Canada, and Filipino by blood. Accounts of her upbringing also connect her to New Jersey and Sacramento, reflecting a life formed across several North American communities.
She was raised as an only child by a single mother. Like many children in Filipino families, the professional future initially imagined for her was considerably more conventional.
“Growing up Filipino, I was expected to become a nurse,” DeGuzman told Loop Magazine in 2024.
A career in magic was far removed from the path her mother understood, particularly when success depended on entertainment bookings, television appearances and the uncertain reach of social media. Choosing it meant proving that her talent could become more than a hobby.
“I had to bet on myself,” she said.
Her mother has since become one of her biggest supporters, while DeGuzman has increasingly spoken about how her Filipino heritage informs the way she approaches her work.
“Being Filipino taught me resilience,” she told Tatler Asia.
DeGuzman has also expressed a desire to create magic throughout the Philippines, collaborate with Filipino artists, and incorporate elements of local culture into larger, more cinematic illusions.
The next chapter of her career may eventually bring her skills closer to the country she considers part of home.
For now, another NFL locker room has been added to her list of bewildered audiences. The Patriots will spend the coming months trying to diagnose everything their opponents place in front of them. For a few minutes before the season, however, Anna DeGuzman gave them something none of them could read.
