‘The Masked Singer’s Giraffe on What You Didn’t See During Ken Jeong’s Long Guess
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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 4, Episode 3 of The Masked Singer, “The Group A Play Offs – Famous Masked Words.”]
It was Group A’s turn again in the Wednesday episode of The Masked Singer, but Giraffe fell short of reaching new heights and walking away with the golden mask trophy.
So, while Popcorn, Sun, and Snow Owls advanced, Giraffe was unmasked after his second performance (“Get Down on It” by Kool & the Gang) as actor Brian Austin Green (Beverly Hills, 902010).
“It was definitely difficult” to perform in the costume, Green tells TV Insider. “I had really limited vision. I couldn’t see up or down, and I had no peripheral vision at all. I had this little sliver to look through, so it was hard making sure the costume stayed together and the mask stayed on and was solid enough where I could move and it didn’t flop around. It was really challenging. I’m glad it worked and people had no idea it was me.”
Here, Green opens up about doing The Masked Singer now, panelist Ken Jeong’s very long (and wrong) guess, and more.
How did you get involved with this season of The Masked Singer? Why was now the right time for you to do this?
Brian Austin Green: Because I was bored. [Laughs] Everyone’s sitting at home. It’s the pandemic. I had spent five months in my house and the idea of, “Oh, I can go do something and still entertain people but in this way,” it just seemed like the perfect show. The idea of it is that it’s not really a competition, it’s not how well you sing or do that, it’s just about having fun, so it just seemed like a no-brainer to me, honestly. I like the fact that it wasn’t a competition, it doesn’t have that vibe, and I think the show is really well done and it’s fun to watch and it’s interesting for people especially now sitting at home to be able to watch that. It’s like, hey, you have nothing but time to try and research and be a part of it, so I thought it was cool.
Let’s talk about that costume and the neck — and I loved the glasses!
[Laughs] Thanks.
Why the Giraffe?
I just left it to the costume department. I was like, “You know what? I’ll say, ‘Hey, how about a bottle of ketchup?'” I’m not super creative that way. I said, “Listen, I’m going to stay in my lane, you guys just run with it,” and they had two different costumes. They had the Giraffe and then they had one that was like a Serpent.
(Michael Becker/FOX)
The Giraffe just seemed really fitting. I liked the vibe that came from the original drawing that they had, and I knew it would be fun. I knew it would be challenging and it’d be an interesting experience and that would be a really cool part of it for me, and it was. That Giraffe head, being as big as it was, was such a challenge, but at the end of the day, I feel like I really survived something and that’s pretty cool for me. That’s one of those “I’m going to try something that seems impossible,” and the fact that I accomplished it was cool. Being able to dance and do stuff in that was really cool.
And I thought it would be a fun character for my kids to see, but my kids just can’t stay up long enough. I took a picture the first week when the show aired of them because I was like, “Hey, let’s watch this show. It’s people in costumes, performing and doing stuff,” and they were like, “Oh, that’s cool.” By 8:15, they were sound asleep, so I took a picture of them sleeping. My expectations of it were much different from what I got, but it was fun.
And it was such a detailed costume.
Oh, that costume department, they’re phenomenal [with] what they do. Their attention to detail is insane. If you really get a chance, just look at the loafers alone that I was wearing. Those were just plain loafers and one by one, they glued every single jewel on those shoes and made them what they were. They did that on the cane. They did that on the vest. It was a really intricate costume, and their attention to detail is unbelievable. No wonder they’ve won an Emmy [in 2020, for Outstanding Costumes for a Variety, Nonfiction or Reality Program] for what it is they do on the show because it’s outstanding. It’s amazing what they do.
Moving on to the panelists’ guesses, what’d you think of them? I have to say you did such a great job playing up the comedy with your reaction to Ken’s long explanation, which couldn’t have been easy to do in that costume.
Oh my God, being there, Ken’s awesome, he’s really funny, but that dude can talk. When I tell you it was a half an hour, no f**king lie, it was a half an hour. That dude would not stop talking. You gotta realize, being in that costume, it’s horribly uncomfortable. It’s super hot inside. There’s no air circulation at all. And you can’t speak. So you’re just standing there. And once he got going, that’s the point where it was like, “Dude, can we wrap this up? Come on, you’re talking about garlic knots and all sorts of stuff. Let’s do this.”
And then he being the comedian that he is, he picked up on the fact that he was over-talking and was a bit of an annoyance and then he ran with that. So it was like, “OK, I’m going to, in my own way, talk about the fact you are speaking way too much right now.” It’d be like 30 minutes you’d be standing there as he’s talking away. They edit it, they do all that, they make it way less painful for people, but being on stage, really, that dude can talk like I’ve never experienced. He is really good at speaking, and I spoke to him afterwards and I gave him s**t about it, and he apologized because he didn’t think about the fact that, “Oh, the costume sucks to be in and they have him stand there for 30 minutes while I’m talking in that costume.”
That was actually really fun. It’s really challenging to be in front of people who can speak and you can do nothing but mime. You sort of feel like a Disneyland character, and you’re just doing thumbs up and hand gestures and all these things because they can’t see your face. That becomes the challenge. How do you keep a character alive without being able to talk? And that’s all they’re doing is talking. You want to respond to it and go, “That was a stupid guess,” and you can’t do anything other than give thumbs up or thumbs down or sleep on the stage, which is what I did.
(Michael Becker/FOX)
No one guessed you, but Joel McHale was at least in the ballpark with the right show with Jason Priestley.
He was in the right ballpark with Jason but then it was the same ballpark I think it was when Nicole was talking about Megan [Fox] and Transformers and then all of a sudden went Shia [LaBeouf] and then it was like, “Oh, man, nobody has a clue who I am in this costume. They couldn’t be further off than they are right now. So, cool, alright, this is becoming fun. It’s now just up to me to keep challenging them and doing as many things as I possibly can to throw them off.” It became fun for me, and then of course, it didn’t last long, so I was like, “Damnit, I had all these ideas and then I get to go home. I don’t have to wear this costume anymore.”
What went into your song choices? Was there anything you specifically wanted to show off with your vocals?
My original pitch was doing [panelist] Robin [Thicke]‘s “When I Get You Alone” song because it starts with the whole Beethoven thing and it very much matched the costume and all of that. They have this process where you pick songs and then they get instrumentals and then you work with Tim, the vocal coach, and then he records the music and you singing the song. I talked to him the next day, and it was like, “OK, well, how about this song?” So I was like, “OK, so that didn’t — ” I had all these song ideas. I’m just not a very good singer, so I kept picking all these songs, thinking, “Oh, this song would be cool dramatically, looks-wise onstage and then quickly realized, “I can’t sing this song.”
Robin’s song was first because I thought that’d be fun to do, one of his songs, and then that didn’t work well. Then I was going to do Jamiroquai, “Virtual Insanity,” but he’s a really good singer, and so it just kept going down the list until it got to the point where I was like, “Listen, I just need to still have fun on stage but do something that’s not as vocally challenging as those songs.” That’s when the Black Eyed Peas made sense because I’ve worked with them before, I’ve known Will forever, and it just seemed like a really fun choice on stage to be able to do everything I possibly could in that costume and throw them off, and it worked.
The Masked Singer, Wednesdays, 8/7c, Fox
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