‘The Masked Singer’: Gumball Reveals Song He Wanted to Do Before Going Home

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Masked Singer Season 11 finale “One Mask Takes It All.”]

Only one celebrity could emerge from The Masked Singer Season 11 victorious, but the finale did give us amazing performances from both remaining stars.

Gumball and Goldfish were the last two masks left standing, and after two performances from each, it was time to determine who would win the season. Goldfish came out on top, while Gumball was the runner-up, and under the respective masks were actress and singer Vanessa Hudgens and actor and singer Scott Porter.

Below, Porter opens up about his time on the show, coming in second, and why he didn’t expect to be guessed.

Congratulations on making it to the finale and coming in second!

Scott Porter: Yeah, it’s farther than I ever thought I would go, but at some point, I think it was Jenny [McCarthy-Wahlberg] that said, “Oh, this guy wants to win.” And it wasn’t so much that Gumball wanted to win the whole thing. Gumball didn’t want to go home before he got to sing every song he possibly could. And I did that by making it to the finale and even more with all the Smackdowns and the Battle Royales. So I sang every ounce I could sing on that show, and it was an incredible experience. I wouldn’t trade anything for it.

What made you say yes to doing The Masked Singer? Did you have any hesitations?

I didn’t have any hesitations at all about going on the show. In this business nowadays, I think you have to be a multi-hyphenate. I think you have to be able to show everything that you can do. And for years and years and years, that wasn’t necessarily allowed in Hollywood. If you were a film actor, you were only a film actor. If you were a television actor, that’s all you were. If you were a Broadway performer, that’s all you were. They wanted to try and put you in these little boxes. But in today’s age, I feel like everybody is able to go out and do all of the things that they can do and they’re supported in that.

So I had zero hesitation. I grew up around music. My parents were in a rock band when I was a kid. I used to set up my dad’s drums and play foosball with the bouncer and fall asleep in the office manager’s office. I was around music all the time growing up, and nowadays I don’t get to do it all that much. I don’t get to perform. I’m not on stages all that often any longer. So I jumped at the chance to be able to get on stage then and perform, and I had a blast.

You had some incredible performances over the season, I have to say, especially “Carry on Wayward Son.” Which performance stands out to you?

Yeah, “Carry on Wayward Son” has been an anthem in my life for a long time. When you’re on the road and you’re living out of suitcases and hotel rooms and you’re wondering where all of the choices in your life have led you, you just got to keep the faith that keeps steering the ship and have hope that it’s all going to be worth it. My parents supported me through everything, the lean years early on and through the successes. And as I’ve gotten older, my wife has supported me in the exact same way, and that song has just meant a lot to me over the years.

But I would say that the performance that was most special to me was probably “I Lived” by OneRepublic. When they create these clue packages and they create the story of the mask of the character that you’re playing, you can only speak to one little bit of your life at a time. And I didn’t want to go home before I got to dedicate a song to the kids, and sitting on the couch last week, I got to come home from Ginny & Georgia and spend time with the family, and I was sitting on the couch watching the show with my kids when Gumball sang that song and I am tearing up right now. That was a really special moment. And that performance, I think you can hear it in Gumball’s voice, how much that meant.

So I think those two performances, I mean, I don’t know, it’s hard to pick just one. “Wide Open Spaces” was awesome, too. The show definitely challenged me in a lot of different ways this season. I sang a lot of female artists’ songs, divas, legendary singers, and they challenged me each and every week. So it’s tough to pick just one, but those were some special performances, for sure.

So your kids knew that was you?

It took them one episode to figure out that daddy might be under the Gumball mask. They were much faster than my mom. My mom took a couple of weeks, and then she called me about three weeks in and said, “Honey, is that you?” [Laughs] So the family started to figure it out. Of course, I played coy, “I don’t know, a lot of people are guessing me,” but my kids immediately knew. My daughter knew because there was a spider on a mushroom in the first clue package. And one of her favorite things is that I played Scarlet Spider in a Spider-Man cartoon. It was such an obscure clue that I think nobody would’ve gotten but her. And she got it. And then my son realized that—as a wrap gift at the end of our season, I had gotten a gumball machine from The Masked Singer and I had brought it home and hid it away on a shelf, but McCoy had laid eyes on it at some point. So we got home that day from school, the day after he watched the first performance, he said, “Dad, come here. Look at this gumball machine hiding in the cabinet.” I said, “Okay, alright, kids. I don’t know if it’s me under there, but even if you think it is, you can’t tell anybody.” [Laughs]

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Your kids are better than the panel because you fooled them. Rita Ora did get to Friday Night Lights finally in the semifinals.

Yeah, I mean, my kids were able to guess me because I do sing to them almost every night. When I read them a book and then they lay down to go to sleep, I sing to them and I sung some of these songs to them already, so they knew it was me.

As far as the judges, I had zero expectation I would ever be guessed. I said this before and I stand by it: I am not the level of celebrity where somebody knows who I am. I have been on people’s favorite shows, but I’m that guy from that show they love. I’m not necessarily, “Oh, Scott Porter, I know him.” And that has been an awesome way to live in this business because I can go anywhere. I can do anything I want. I watch friends of mine who have reached different levels of fame not be able to go get something to eat without being bothered, and that’s not the life that I’ve lived.

I’m the guy that when somebody posts a picture of me on the internet, people say, “Who” with a question mark, all those Instagram jokers. But the judges I thought for sure were not going to guess me. And I was right for the most part. Rita, I was in the back of my head going, “Is it happening? Is this really happening? Oh my gosh, did Rita figure me out?” But I will wear it as a badge of honor that she said Taylor Kitsch instead of me, even though he’s not married and he doesn’t have kids. But the fact that I didn’t get guessed, I think that’s kind of cool actually, because they still had a very surprising moment for each of them as well as the audience when I finally took the mask off. And that’s what you hope for on the show, I think. You go in with zero expectations, you perform and you connect with people through this crazy costume, and you hope that at the end when you take your mask off, they say, “Wow, I had no idea that you had this in you.” And I feel like that’s what I got at the end.

You spoke about your family guessing that it was you, but have you heard from any of your former or current co-stars over the past weeks who figured out it was you?

I got a lot of texts with a link to a performance and a question mark, to which I go, “A lot of people are saying it’s me, but it could be other people as well. I don’t know what to tell you.” I don’t know that a ton of people figured out that it was me. I think my closest friends kind of knew, but I haven’t fielded a lot of, “Hey, tell me this is you right now” kind of text. It’s been very respectful with question marks and a lot of people playing along. But as far as people from Friday Night Lights or from Hart of Dixie, no, nobody really reached out. I did have one cast member on Ginny & Georgia who will remain nameless, but we were shooting last week in a town outside of Toronto and we were all staying the night in a small hotel. And they came the next day and said, “I was watching The Masked Singer last night and this voice was very suspicious.” We’ve done karaoke nights before up in Toronto, and I think she had me figured out the next day. But outside of that, I haven’t had many occasions of that.

I need to hear more music from you.

I don’t know what the future holds. I would love to do music, but we will see what doors open up after this. I just wanted to get on stage and kind of prove to myself that I still had it. And if that means that other people out here in Hollywood figure it out, too, then that’s awesome. That would be a really cool kind of side effect of doing this whole thing. But really this was for me and for my family, and I had a blast.

The Masked Singer, Season 12, Fall 2024, Fox