(Warning: This post contains spoilers for Wednesday’s episode of “The Masked Singer.”)
“The Masked Singer” said a quick hello and goodbye to Beetle on Wednesday night, unmasking the singer as the legendary TV host Jerry Springer. And really, he’s OK with how shortlived his stint on the show was — he just wanted to have some fun. There is one thing he’d change about the show, but he knows it’d ruin the fun.
And really, Springer only agreed to appear under a mask because he wanted to have some fun — plus, he knew his grandson would love it.
“You know, I’m at a point in life when I’m not thinking about how will this help my career, or something like that, you know? Those days are gone,” Springer told TheWrap. “So now I just do things that are either fun or important. This falls into the fun category.”
Granted, he didn’t tell his grandson in advance. He only told his wife — who immediately questioned if the powers that be had ever actually heard him sing — and kept the secret from everyone else. According to the host, being on the show really is “like working for the CIA.” That was the biggest downside of the experience for him.
“It is hard. But, if you agree to be on the show, those are the rules. So you abide by them,” he said. “And that would be the, ‘If I could change one thing,’ but you wouldn’t have to show if I had my way with that change. Because the change would be — you know, my family couldn’t go through the experience of the weeks before the show, the whole development of it.”
He continued: “So they missed the ride they only got to see the final game. But you couldn’t — if you took my suggestion you wouldn’t have to show. So I totally get the decision they made, but I’m just saying that took away maybe some of the fun you would have, if your family was laughing at you along the way trying to learn how to sing a song.”
But even with that struggle, Springer found the fun he was looking for from the experience. In fact, he’d call it “purely fun.” Springer even got a good laugh out of some of the guesses people had (though he definitely thinks anyone who suggested his costume meant he was one of the remaining living members of the actual Beatles was drinking).
Looking back at it, Springer joked that even though he wasn’t surprised his identity was correctly guessed, he probably should have expected to be eliminated. The writing was clearly on the wall.
“Not only did I watch the other two acts — and they were phenomenal, they could really sing and everything. I mean, they were phenomenal. So I knew that,” Springer said. “But the other reason is, they rehearsed me on the song that I sang, ‘The Way You Look Tonight.’ But they never gave me one rehearsal on the second song. Not one! And I wasn’t even thinking about it at the time. And then on the way back home, I said, You know what? They knew I wasn’t going to make it. You know, let’s say for some reason I had been voted to stay on for the next song. What was I gonna sing?”
He added, “And then the hotel calls me early in the morning, they said you want an early checkout? How did they know I would need an early checkout?”
“The Masked Singer” airs on Wednesdays at 8/7c on FOX.