“The Masked Singer” will premiere its fourth season later this month on Fox. And you know what that means, right? New contestants, new costumes and new levels of insanity for those masked celebrities participating in the new season of the “whosungit” show.
And while we still don’t know everything about “The Masked Singer” Season 4, TheWrap has gathered up enough details about the upcoming episodes to share them with you, our dear readers. See our list below, which will continue to be updated as more information becomes available.
1. When will it premiere?
Fox set “The Masked Singer” Season 4 premiere for Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 8 p.m., the show’s usual time slot. The fourth season’s debut will be followed by the series premiere of “Masked Singer” panelist Ken Jeong’s new competition series, “I Can See Your Voice.”
This Sunday, Fox aired a sneak-peek preview of “The Masked Singer’s” new season at 8/7c.
2. When did it go into production?
When Fox renewed “The Masked Singer” for Season 4 in May, the network said it was hopeful production on the new batch of episodes would begin in early August. The fourth season went into production Aug. 20 in Los Angeles, with new safety guidelines in place due to COVID-19.
3. Who is hosting and who are the judges?
Don’t worry, your standard team is still intact for Season 4: Nick Cannon will be returning as host and Ken Jeong, Nicole Scherzinger, Robin Thicke and Jenny McCarthy will once again serve as the show’s panelists.
4. Who are the guest judges?
We have no idea yet, so check back later.
5. How many celebrities are competing this time?
In Season 1, “The Masked Singer” had 12 celebrity contestants competing. For Season 2, 16 contestants competed. In Season 3, the show boasted its largest lineup yet with 18 masked competitors. Fox revealed that for Season 4, 16 total contestants — but 17 celebrities, since the Snow Owls are two people who count as one competitor — will be competing.
6. What costumes have been revealed so far?
All 16 costumes for Season 4 have been unveiled, including Serpent, Gremlin, Snow Owls (the show’s first two-celebrity costume), Crocodile, Giraffe, Broccoli, Popcorn, Seahorse, Jellyfish, Mushroom, Whatchamacallit, Squiggly Monster, Dragon, Baby Alien, Sun and Lips. Readers can find the first-look photos of each costume here.
(In case you were wondering, Season 4 has 17 masked celebrities total, but 16 contestants, because the Snow Owls count as one competitor, according to Fox.)
At the beginning of the summer, “Masked Singer” executive producer Craig Plestis and costume designer Marina Toybina starting giving hints about what you can expect to in the way of costumes this time around.
“I wish I could show you what she’s done so far,” Plestis said during a virtual panel June 26. “They’re so incredible and inventive. There are things that we’ve never seen in three seasons of the show that I just can’t wait to show America.” He added that the new designs will make it “even harder to decipher the [masked celebrities] than before.”
“I’m working with new craftsmen, new shops, new pattern-makers, constantly trying to figure out and create more and more for every single costume that we do,” Toybina said during the online event. “We create a lot of our own fabrics, which in Season 1, I was able to explore that world, but going into Season 4 it really is a lot of custom work. And almost every costume is finished by hand. For me, I’ve dabbled in a lot more research now and I’m dealing with 3D printing, which I’ve never done before. Just all these ways of creating our own materials, our own structures. Learning a new way to create masks from scratch. What kind of forms can we build? We have to consider the ideas of vocal and vision and making everything breathable.”
7. What will the format look like?
We don’t know that yet, but Plestis gave a few hints earlier this summer.
“We’re still tweaking it a little bit, to be honest, right now, based on some of the creative that we’re playing around with,” Plestis said during the June panel. “But I gotta say, I’m really excited by the changes that we’re doing to some of the little beats within the show. But America loves it, so I don’t want to change too much and hurt the franchise.”
Plestis added: “You’ll see that even more in Season 4, the gamesmanship has been upped beyond belief with what we’re doing.”
8. How has the coronavirus affected production?
When “The Masked Singer” Season 4 began production in August, it did so without a studio audience for the first time in the show’s history, one of the safety precautions put in place due to the pandemic. However, this change has had a silver lining: The Fox singing competition will be adding a fan-voting component for the first time ever this season.
“Masked Singer” super fans will have a chance to be a part of a “virtual audience” from the safety of their homes, watch performances and cast their vote as to which costumed singers they would like to see again.
The votes will be taken virtually and help determine the outcome of the competition, which is normally decided by “Masked Singer” panelists Jenny McCarthy, Robin Thicke, Ken Jeong and Nicole Scherzinger, and the studio audience — not fans at home, due to the fact the show is pre-taped.
“We’re full steam ahead, but everyone is operating in their isolated little bubbles in their houses,” Plestis said during the June 26 panel when the new season was still in the pre-production stage. “We’re getting the work done. It takes a lot longer, I’m not going to lie. It’s a lot more energy, a lot of Zoom calls, as Marina knows. I think we talk every day, multiple times a day on Zoom.”
He continued: “And prepping for the show taping itself is all about making sure that everyone is protected going into production with testing and everything else and a limited amount of people on sets and keeping people, even when they get into production, in an isolated position. So safety is key all the way across for our crew and our talent. It’s a lot of extra work, a lot of extra money, but it’s worth the energy to produce this.”
9. Will there be an audience this season, given the possible safety problems posed by COVID-19?
Nope. The studio audience has been scrapped due to COVID. (See details above.)
10. Will there be set changes this year?
Yes, apparently some big ones.
“There’s some elements that we’re developing right now that will literally blow everyone’s mind with what we’re doing with the set, when it comes out in the fall, that no other network show has done before,” Plestis said during the June panel. “So I’m really excited that we could push the bar here in Season 4.”
11. Do we have any clues about the identities of the contestants yet?
Yes! Here are the first clues, which were revealed during Fox’s sneak-peek special Sunday.