‘The Masked Singer’ Season 10 Winner: It Was ‘Refreshing’ to ‘Step Outside of Myself’

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Masked Singer Season 10 finale.]

And with that, another celebrity is the winner of the Golden Mask Trophy.

Four remained as The Masked Singer headed into its 10th season finale: Cow, Donut, Gazelle, and Sea Queen. Sea Queen (singer Macy Gray) and Gazelle (actress Janel Parrish) were the first eliminated. Then Donut and Cow each sang one more time before Cow emerged the winner. And under the mask was singer-songwriter and actor Shaffer Chimere Smith, known professionally as Ne-Yo. (Donut was actor John Schneider.)

Below, Ne-Yo talks about his win, how long it took certain people on the show to figure him out, and more.

How does it feel since you’ve had some time to process the win and look back on your time on the show and you dedicated this to your mother?

Ne-Yo: I had a lot of fun. I genuinely did. It’s probably one of the most fun things that I’ve ever done. Never ever in life did I ever imagine that one of the most fun things that I would ever do would be to dress up as a female cow. [Laughs] Yeah, I had a ball with this. I genuinely did, and I got to sit and watch a couple episodes with my kids. I didn’t tell anybody, but they knew already. They heard dad’s voice, and they automatically knew. So it was cool to sit with them and my mom and watch a couple episodes. It was a great time. I had a ball with this whole thing.

So did you tell your mom from the beginning that you were doing this?

No. We actually are fans of the show, and we just sat and watched, but again, it didn’t take her long to figure it out either. She definitely knows her son’s voice.

What went into your song choices?

The whole reason that I decided to go with the female cow is because I kind of knew that I can’t really change my singing voice at all. My singing voice is my singing voice, and it’s somewhat distinctive. So I figured that I might get caught relatively easy and early on. So I tried to do songs that were somewhat outside of my wheelhouse, songs that you wouldn’t so much think that I would do or songs that you wouldn’t so much hear my voice on. Just again, trying to last as long as I could.

Was there one performance in particular that stood out to you that made you realize you could very well win?

I actually loved all of the performances. My [costume] didn’t allow me to do a whole lot of dancing because I couldn’t really see very well in it, but Disco Night was really fun. “Ring My Bell” [by Anita Ward] is one of my mom’s favorite songs. I can genuinely remember her and my aunts all dancing around in the kitchen to that song, so that song struck a chord with me. But all of the performances were a lot of fun. There was only one judge that kind of was consistently like, “Oh yeah, that’s got to be Ne-Yo, and that was Robin [Thicke].” But people weren’t listening to him. They were like, nah, nah, nah. So once that started happening I was like, “okay, I might be good. I might be alright. I might survive the whole thing.”

Yeah, I was going to say once Robin figured you out, he stuck with that guess. Were you surprised that he figured you out so early?

No, to be honest. The only two judges that I was concerned about might recognize me were him and Nicole [Scherzinger] because I have actual relationships with the two of them. I’ve worked with Nicole very closely in the past, as well as Robin. We’ve done a bunch of shows together, toured together. So I figured if I could get past those two, then I would be okay.

You also have fun messing with Nick Cannon on the stage, and then after the unmasking, he said you had him fooled for the first few performances. Were you surprised it took him that long?

I really was. Again, Nick is a close friend of mine, so I figured, okay, he is going to know, but maybe he’s not going to say anything or something. But he genuinely didn’t know. There was even one show where he was like, “I know it’s not Ne-Yo,” and when that happened, I was like, “okay, I’m scot-free at this point.”

Yeah, that was surprising. He was so certain.

[Laughs] I really figured that he would know. But yeah, I guess I was doing a pretty good job at being a female cow? I don’t know.

Michael Becker / FOX

What are you going to take away from your entire experience on the show?

Some of the things that I had to do in order to pull it off was I had to kind of step outside of myself, so to speak. I couldn’t move the way I would normally move. Again, picking songs somewhat outside of my wheelhouse. So it was just refreshing to step out of the Ne-Yo box for a minute and just be somebody else. And it kind of took me back to the reason that I became a songwriter in the first place, just the thrill and excitement of just stepping outside of your own skin for a minute. It’s refreshing, and it kind of brought back a love for my songwriting that I had somewhat lost. The business side of the music industry will definitely kill some of the joy of music for you just because of what it is and how competitive it is and the whole nine. And I got to say, doing this kind of brought some of that joy back for me. It reminded me why it is that I love what I do in the first place. So thank you to The Masked Singer for basically revitalizing my joy and love for music.

And now you can bring that into your songwriting going forward, which is great.

There we go.

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What surprised you the most about the show?

I knew that they ran a tight ship. I was not aware of how tight of a ship they ran because they were really super, even backstage, adamant about not talking to anybody, nobody talking to you. You have to wear these visors so that nobody sees your face. Nobody sees your hands. It’s super like spy games or something. It’s super, super, super locked down. And I was shocked at just the level of security. They take it really serious. They don’t want anybody to know. I didn’t know who any of the other contestants were the whole time. There was no interaction whatsoever. They were really, really adamant about, no one can know who you are. It’s secret tunnels, the whole nine yards. It was crazy. But again, a lot of fun.

Where are you going to keep the Golden Mask Trophy?

Well, my mom has a trophy cabinet that she keeps pretty much all of my achievements in. She has my three Grammys there. Pretty much every award that I’ve won, I keep it with my mom, and yeah, she’s just going to have to make room in the cabinet for this one.

And you talked about how much she means to you and everything. What was her reaction to hearing that since you watched episodes together?

There were a couple teary moments, but I never hesitate to let my mom know how much I appreciate her. She definitely knows that she is loved and appreciated by me and that nothing that I’ve accomplished would be even remotely possible without her love and support throughout the years. And I don’t let too much time pass without letting her know. On a regular basis, I let her know. So this show just kind of put a magnifying glass on that, on what was already a fact in her mind.

The Masked Singer, Season 11 Premiere, Wednesday, March 6, 2024, 8/7c, Fox