[Spoiler alert: This story contains the identity of the eliminated contestant on Wednesday night’s (Feb. 5) The Masked Singer.]
After pulling back the Robot mask and revealing rapper Lil Wayne on Sunday night’s post-Super Bowl season 3 debut of The Masked Singer, Wednesday night’s reveal of a beloved comedian/game show host under the supremely silly Llama costume was another win for the show that aims to surprise, delight and confound its audience.
Debuting with a spirited run through Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs” on Sunday and then hitting the panel with a spot-on take of Welsh crooner Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” on Wednesday night, the judges’ guesses as to who could be under the elaborate domesticated South American camelid head were all over the place. And, as usual, they were wrong, but Dr. Ken star Ken Jeong was, of course, the wrongest.
The clues didn’t really help, either. References to accordions, Buddhas, Seattle and GOATs were just confusing, with Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg guessing funnyman Zack Galifianakis, via his role as the Joker in the Lego Batman Movie, Nicole Scherzinger suggesting another funnyman, David Spade, and Robin Thicke and Jeong going funny as well with conjecture about former guest panelist Joel McHale as well as watermelon-smashing comedian Gallagher or maybe accordion-loving song parodist “Weird Al” Yankovic.
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They were definitely all in the right neighborhood, but despite two of the people onstage actually working with the laugh-inducing Llama, none of them got it right when The Price Is Right host Drew Carey took off the towering head and revealed he was the one.
Billboard spoke to Carey before the reveal to find out how he ended up on a show just around the corner from his day job with nobody finding out about his side hustle and why those Martin and Jones songs were actually not as strange as they seemed from the garage-rock-loving host of The Friday Night Freak Out on SiriusXM’s Little Steven’s Underground Garage channel.
You’re a guy known for being both funny and improvisational, but the costuming on this show seems to leave little space for either. Why did it appeal to you?
I thought it would be great to have the mask on. Because in my head — and it was true — the mask gets rid of all these social anxieties we have about performing in public. Because I’m not a singer and it’s out of my comfort zone, but if I have a mask on nobody knows who I am and I can get loose and go for it. Also, the stage manager on the show was the stage manager for The Price Is Right for four years, so for four years this guy [Jonathan] was connected to me onstage and he would watch my every move and he had no idea who I was!
Someone you worked with every day for four years didn’t figure it out?
You’re in a mask the whole time and they give you a hoodie and a visor and you’re wearing gloves and your whole body is hidden. The security there is insane. I go onto the stage to rehearse in my Llama costume and they introduce me to Jonathan and I thought the jig was up and he had no idea. It was kind of freeing.
Did you watch the earlier seasons? What made you want to throw your non-singing Bermuda hat in the ring?
I think it’s because [Whose Line Is It Anyway? co-star] Wayne Brady did it [Brady won season 2 of The Masked Singer]. When he was on, right away people started tweeting me like, “Your friend Wayne Brady is on The Masked Singer!” And they’d send me clips and I watched and I said, “Yeah, that’s definitely Wayne, no doubt about it.” And when they asked me to do it, I said, “That looks like a lot of fun.” The only reason I agreed to do it is it’s so positive and fun. It’s like karaoke for laughs. Even though they have very serious singers who can belt out tunes on that show, it’s still treated like a goof in a way, which makes it really appealing for me. Because you can’t get hurt doing it. There’s no downside to this show and you can have a lot of fun.
That had to have been one of the most cumbersome costumes yet, with the back end on wheels. What did you think when you were first presented with it? What about the fun-loving, hippie Llama spoke to you?
Oh, I picked the Llama. They sent me a PDF with pictures of costumes they had and let me pick. There were several of them… the Frog. I didn’t like that one, but when I saw the Llama one, that moved me. The picture was just like what it looked like. It’s a little like hippie thing, and I’m half-hippie. Where the show is taped, I could walk to set five minutes from where The Price Is Right tapes so when I was doing the fitting, I was on set and I had to go out on my lunch hour and get in my car and pretend I was driving somewhere. I went around the corner on the lot and parked outside and ran in so nobody could see me.
Was the accordion clue a reference to your cameo in “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “It’s All About the Pentiums” video?
No. I played accordion growing up and every once in a while, I pick it up and practice. It’s in my living room on a stand. They came over to my house to go over songs with me — the producers and a vocal coach — and they saw the accordion there and mentioned it in the package.
Whose idea was it for you to cover “She Bangs”? It seems very off-brand from the garage rock nuggets you play on your Underground Garage show.
That’s actually one of my regular karaoke songs. I used to go out and do karaoke for a while, almost every week, with Jeff Davis from Whose Line and a friend of mine who is an improv performer. … We really loved doing karaoke, and song selection is the main thing. There are two keys to karaoke: song selection and giving it 100%. It honestly doesn’t matter if you sing on key; if you pick good songs, the crowd will belt it out with you. I was listening to it one time after the William Hung thing [on American Idol] and wondered if I could do that song, and I did it at home and it was pretty much in my range.
The Tom Jones cover was pretty flawless. Is that another karaoke favorite of yours?
My actual Tom Jones song is “Help Yourself.” I actually got to hang out with Tom Jones at a Hollywood party. This producer I know throws these outrageous Hollywood parties with celebrities all over, and every once in a while he has parties where people come over and he has a spare room he turns into a music room, with theater seating and a piano and he hires a piano player to come in. People get up and sing and play guitar. Tom Jones was at one and I was hanging with him and — I went because they said Tom Jones was going to sing — and I’m talking to Tom Jones and I said, “If I asked you something, I hope it doesn’t sound goofball.” He said, “Go for it,” and I said when I do karaoke one of my go-tos is “Help Yourself,” do you have any tips? He said to sing it in key but take it down a couple notches because it’s high. I said I already did that and he said, “I do too!” and everyone laughed. Then later, around 3 in the morning, Tom Jones gets up and sings for 45 minutes, just him and the piano player to a crowd of 25 and he was amazing. But he doesn’t do any Tom Jones songs, just blues standards and old crooner songs. Around a quarter to 4, he says, “Drew, get up here and sing ‘Help Yourself’ with me!” I pulled the lyrics up on my phone and said, “I can’t believe I’m going to sing this with you,” and he said, “You’re not, I’m going to go in the back.” So he left me up there onstage and went in the back and I had to sing “Help Yourself” to Tom Jones.
I know it’s a family-friendly show, but I have to ask: Given the typical reaction to Tom Jones, were any panties thrown onstage?
There were no panties.
The guesses were all kind of in the comedy wheelhouse: Howard Stern, Joel McHale, Gallagher, “Weird Al,” Galifianakis… but Nicole also hit you with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, which isn’t bad company.
The guesses were really making me laugh, because I know Jenny McCarthy. She was on The Drew Carey Show back in the day, and when she was, we’d go to the Playboy Mansion and I’d see her there, so I’ve interacted with her and she and the stage manager had no idea! I was genuinely laughing.
Who was it hardest to keep the secret from?
I didn’t tell anybody. I’m dating a girl and I told her, because when they offered me the show, I said I was thinking of doing this, what do you think? And my trainer guy who comes to help me stretch a couple times a week. Those are the only two people that knew. I even had friends over to watch the Super Bowl and a bunch wanted to watch The Masked Singer after. I had to play it cool. We watched the first one and everyone was guessing and I said, “Can we watch something else?” I had to pretend I hated the show [and turned it off before my segment]. I had heard from my kid and my ex asking, “Are you the Llama?” I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” And she said, “I know those moves and it’s you.” And my kid texted, “What’s up, Llama?” They guessed right away and I still couldn’t tell them. I had to say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about… I hear they’re real strict with NDA [non-disclosure agreements],” and they just started laughing.