Roberta Battaglia, the 11-year-old singer from Canada who made it to the finals of Season 15 of America's Got Talent, finished in fourth place on Wednesday night's finale.
"It has meant so, so much to me," she said, on a stage at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, after learning her fate. "Thank you, everyone, for your support. I mean, this is only the beginning."
Brandon Leake, a 27-year-old spoken word poet from Stockton, California, was crowned the winner. (Leake was Canadian judge Howie Mandel's "golden buzzer" pick.)
In the second hour of the finale, Battaglia and finalist Kenadi Dodds got to join Canadian singer JP Saxe and his girlfriend, singer-songwriter Julia Michaels, on stage for a performance of their hit "If the World Was Ending."
AGT cast Battaglia after her cover of “Shallow” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper on a Toronto morning show went viral. She performed the song in front of the judges in February (for an episode that aired in June) and earned a “golden buzzer” from Sofía Vergara, enabling her to advance to the live shows.
Battaglia performed Lauren Daigle’s 2018 song “You Say” in an August episode (Daigle tweeted: ‘WOW girl you crushed it!!”) and, earlier this month, performed P!nk’s 2017 hit “What About Us" to earn a spot in the finals, where she covered Canadian singer Alessia Cara’s 2015 hit “Scars to Your Beautiful.”
Canadians were not eligible to vote for AGT contestants.
The $1 million U.S. grand prize is actually a 40-year annuity, meaning Leake will get about $25,000 per year for 40 years, less about 30 percent withheld by the IRS. If he chooses the “present cash value of such annuity” instead, Leake will take home roughly $200,000 U.S.
The winner also gets to headline a two- or three-night show at the Luxor in Las Vegas featuring this season’s AGT finalists. (Due to COVID-19, dates have not been announced.) On Wednesday’s finale, it was announced that the winner will also get a Kia K5.