Tonight’s double dose of “Masked Singer” episodes meant two hours of the crazy competition and two more celebrity identities: Sherri Shepherd, who was The Penguin, and Raven-Symoné, who hid behind The Black Widow.
And though both made it a decent way into the competition (after tonight there are just nine contestants left out of the 16 that Season 2 started with), there were still songs they never got to sing, either because their time was cut short or they didn’t have the stamina.
The latter was Shepherd’s problem when she wanted to perform Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts.”
“I realized how hard it is to be in [the costume and mask] and ‘Truth Hurts,’ I thought I was gonna pass out on the words ‘You could have had a bad bitch,’” the comedian told us. “I was like, ‘This bitch about to pass out.’ So we had to get rid of that song. ‘Cause I thought, I don’t know how [Lizzo] does this without passing out, and I realized ‘Well, that’s what she does, she’s a singer. I’m a comic, I make people laugh. I don’t have to breathe.’ And I make you out of breath!”
Shepherd says had she stayed, she “would have got in the gym, done the elliptical, done the StairMaster and ran 12 miles a day” and “conquered ‘Truth Hurts.’”
Raven told us that had she stuck around, her next track would have been a rap song.
“My next one was going to be ‘Starships’ by Nicki Minaj, because my first album in the music industry was rap. And even though my next album that I’m releasing at the end of the month has no rap songs on it, I still want people to remember that I rapped back in the day.”
“What meant the most to me was just singing those songs that I’ve always wanted to sing, that when I’m putting an album together, people don’t normally give me, because they have a pre-conceived notion of what I should be singing,” she added. “And it was fun to be able to just dig in there and do some of those songs.”
For Shepherd, her costume selection started off as practical and then became more emotional.
“I liked the Penguin because, first of all, I didn’t want anything heavy,” she said. “So anything like a butterfly and you just had extra accoutrement on your body, I didn’t want that. And then I’m a bigger girl, so I didn’t want form-fitting. But the Penguin stood out to be because I immediately said, ‘That looks like a strong character, the Penguin, with the black and white.’ And then I thought, you think you know my life, but it’s not black and white. And I liked that.”
Raven gave us three reasons behind her pick: “1) Because I love wearing black, 2) I’m scared of spiders, and 3) I love what the Black Widow stands for: Just bite ’em and move on. I love it.”
Raven says the hardest person to hide her “Masked Singer” identity from was her “Raven’s Home” co-star Anneliese van der Pol. Shepherd confessed it was horrible keeping her secret from panelist Jenny McCarthy, who is one of her good friends and the two crossed over during their stints as “View” co-hosts.
“The Masked Singer” airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on Fox.