‘Claim to Fame’: Chris Reveals What Cast’s Osmond Blindspot Taught Him About Fame

Viewers of Claim to Fame Season 2 watched with mouths agape as the cast struggled to unveil Chris’s celebrity relative. If his likeness to his father, Donny Osmond, wasn’t clear enough, the many clues about him being a 1970s teen icon from Utah should have made it clear that, at the very least, the mystery person wasn’t British musician Elton John or Billy Idol. Chris tells TV Insider he couldn’t believe the theories either, and they taught him a lot about his family’s fame.

“It’s very apparent to me, now that I’ve been on this show and [have seen[ what people are saying on social media, that the Osmonds, they were very prevalent in the seventies, and then they kind of split off and did their own thing,” Chris explains. “My dad did his own thing. My Aunt Marie [Osmond] did her own thing, and the brothers did. And I’m just realizing the younger generation, if their parent was not a fanatic Osmond fan back in the day, then odds are that kid might not really know about who they are.”

Chris finished in third place this season, behind Jerrica Brooks (Monay) in second and Gabriel Cannon in first. He thought he was going to be eliminated much sooner because of the season’s oldest cast member.

“When Jane took me up there, and she guessed Elvis Presley [in Episode 3], I thought she was going to say, Donny Osmond,” he reveals, “because out of anybody in the house, Jane would’ve known who the Osmonds were. And she does, but I think she was just led astray a little bit to believe Elvis Presley. And honestly, my clue was the perfect combination of little pictographs that would’ve led to Elvis Presley. So I was lucky, but once we got into Elton John and Billy Idol, I was like, this is hilarious. This is getting out of hand.”

Chris and Jane/Jada in ‘Claim to Fame’ Season 2 finale (Credit: ABC/John Fleenor)

Hugo Wentzel (who had the most impressive claim to fame this season being President Jimmy Carter‘s grandson) was eliminated after guessing the “Rocket Man” crooner was Chris’s relative. Somehow, he thought the singer was from Utah. The Utah clue was one of the obvious Osmond dead ringers. Chris is also a Donny dead ringer, and the citizens of Utah agree.

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“Out of all of my brothers, I am the one that looks like him the most, for sure,” he admits. “And it happens on the daily. I live in Utah, and Utah’s very known for the Osmond family. I have a lot of cousins, and so people will pick me out for sure that I’m an Osmond. So that was my biggest worry going into the show that, hey, my looks are not in my favor, but I got lucky.”

Monay and Chris look more like their famous family than anybody else in the Season 2 cast. Chris agrees. “Yes, for sure. And Monay, she slid by. She was a very smart player, and somehow, we still couldn’t figure it out with the SNL reference and everything else. Curb Your Enthusiasm,” he recalls. “That was the one thing with her is, I didn’t know much about that show, and I didn’t know much about J.B. Smoove, and she played an excellent game.”

Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson‘s niece, Carly Reeves (the first player cut from the season and in the most dramatic of fashions), returned with the rest of the cast in the finale, a two-hour event that aired on Monday, August 28, on ABC. And she pitched Saturday Night Live alum Jay Pharaoh as a possible theory for Monay.

We wondered if that was a possibility as well after Episode 8, seeing as Pharaoh played Smoove in a Curb Your Enthusiasm spoof with Larry David on SNL in 2016. In an interview with Smoove himself (who is also an SNL vet), the comedian said Pharaoh’s impression of him is the best there is. But the key difference was found in the clue that said the relative was in Spider-Man: Far From Home, which Smoove was. Chris says he didn’t make this Pharaoh-Smoove connection when Carly posed the idea.

“I got those tips from other people, and so it was hard to pinpoint it down,” he says. “In fact, in that final episode, I was so worried because even coming out of that challenge, I was still scratching my head about Nick Cannon and J.B. Smoove. I was stuck with Terry Crews for Gabe for a while, and so I was happy that everybody came back into the house to help me out. I really, really needed that.”

Monay, Gabriel, and Chris in the ‘Claim to Fame’ Season 2 finale (Credit: ABC/John Fleenor)

In the earliest episodes of the season, the cast theorized that Chris was related to John Mayer and Jim Carrey. Carrey was their best bet for a while before Jane (real name Jada Starr) thought of Presley. Chris says the Mayer and Carrey theories were all part of his strategy.

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“I can do a lot of different impersonations of Jim Carrey, so I had that in my back pocket, but I also had a John Mayer thing in my back pocket being a musician in that similarity, that would’ve helped,” Chris, who has his own solo music career, explains. “I got that a lot growing up that I looked like John Mayer, too.” Another person people think he resembles: “I got a lot of Justin Bieber.”

“So I had a lot of these different ideas, but once I got into the house and the Jim Carrey thing came out, and they started talking about that, I just fed into it,” Chris says. “And then Elvis Presley came out, and I’m like, I’ll just feed into that for a minute and then go this way and go that way. So I kind of went with the crowd on what they were saying. It is weird because strategy goes out the window when you get into the house, depending on what other people are saying about you.”

Chris heard about the John theory before Hugo made that bad bet. He didn’t really fear that night’s Guess-Off as a result, nor was he filled with worry when J.R. (Lil Nas X’s older brother) put him in the hot seat again the very next night. Still, you never know what kind of plot twist may come your way.

“There’s a lot more that happens in the show, obviously, that you may not see,” Chris says. “And I did hear through the grapevine that Elton John was the next thing that was going to happen because of the coat of many colors. They thought it was related to him somehow. And still, to that point, I’d never heard the name Donny Osmond. So I’m like, all right, I should be OK. But every time you’re standing up there as the guesses, it’s scary. It is daunting when they are up there, and they haven’t said the name yet, and we’re both sweating. It’s tense no matter what. But Jane was kind of the more intense moment for sure.”

The show throws players off more than any contestant can. There’s “a lot of overlap” in clues, Chris explains, as fans saw. “It’s crazy to think that there were three people on The Masked Singer: a host, a contestant, and a judge.” He’s referring to Nick Cannon (Gabriel’s big brother), Jenny McCarthy (Olivia’s aunt), and his dad, Donny, who finished in second place in Season 1.

Chris was convinced The Masked Singer clues referenced Donny “the whole time” they were filming. “And then all of a sudden, I’m realizing once Olivia went home and everybody found out it was Jenny McCarthy, I’m like, oh my gosh. That’s hilarious. There is overlap.”

There is no excuse for thinking Elton John is from Utah, though. Sorry.

Claim to Fame, Season 2 Streaming Now, Hulu