(Warning: This post contains spoilers for Wednesday’s “The Masked Singer” Season 5 finale.)
Black Swan may not have won “The Masked Singer,” but the feathery contestant, revealed to be singer JoJo on tonight’s Season 5 finale, was not in the Fox singing competition to win it — but rather to regain her confidence as a performer.
“I had zero expectations going into the show and I’ve seen the most phenomenal singers not make it all the way and not win,” JoJo, born Joanna Levesque, told TheWrap. “So going into it thinking about that, I had no expectation of winning whatsoever, and that is not what I went into it for. I went into it because I really missed singing and performing. I had developed a fear of my own voice and a bit of a stage fright, and I really wanted to break through. I think the only way that I could do that was by facing it head-on — and putting on a really heavy costume and becoming a bird. I don’t know.”
The “Save My Soul” singer said she “really wasn’t upset” to lose to Piglet tonight, who was unmasked to reveal Nick Lachey, because she was “just so excited to make it to the end.”
“Because that just meant that I got to sing another song and have more experiences with the whole crew,” she explained. “I really loved everybody behind the scenes and it was transformative for me.”
As for the identities of the other final three contestants — Lachey’s first-place Piglet and third-place competitor Chameleon, who was Wiz Khalifa — JoJo really struggled to pinpoint who they were until the very end. But to be fair, she had a hard time figuring out who all the Season 5 contestants were.
“I had no idea. I was guessing so wrong the whole season,” she said. “Like, I was so sure. I was like making bets with my manager and my mom. But I really wasn’t able to hear or to see the other performances. They do a really good job of keeping things separate backstage and making sure that we’re not encountering one another, except for when we’re all on stage and for the elimination part. So I didn’t really get to see the performances. But when I found out that it was Wiz, particularly, I was like, of course! Because he has an amazing presence and he’s so tall and it’s just so funny because we have a song together and I was thinking it was so many other different people. And then, as I’ve been watching the show this season, I was like, yes, totally, of course it’s Wiz. Nobody else could be that cool.”
She continued: “And then Nick, he was throwing me off the whole time. But it was cool as well, because I’ve known him and his wife for a long time — not super well, but just because I was a kid on ‘TRL’ and I would see them both.”
“The Masked Singer” will premiere its sixth season this Fall on Fox.