‘The Masked Singer’s Elephant on the Panelist He Thought Would Guess His Identity
Q&A
Take It Off! Take It Off!
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The Masked Singer Season 3 kicked off Group B on February 19 by unmasking Elephant, and it was a skateboarding legend who belted out The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” for the panelists.
“I didn’t have many more songs lined up, so I was thinking maybe I’d make it to the second round, but I’m perfectly happy,” Elephant himself, Tony Hawk, tells TV Insider.
But if he had continued on, what song would he have liked to sing? “‘Born to Be Wild,'” he reveals. “It had probably a better stage presence. I don’t know if I sang it better, but it definitely had more of an active routine.”
Here, Hawk talks about his experience on the hit Fox competition series.
This was a much different experience for you. Was there anything as a skateboarder that you found helped or played against you on this show?
Tony Hawk: It was helpful just to not be afraid to be active to be jumping around and knee-sliding and things like that, and just in terms of confidence in performing. That was the only link I had. I have the ultimate confidence when I skate in front of people, and I just had to redirect that.
(Greg Gayne/FOX)
What was your first reaction when this opportunity came about?
I had to think about it, and when I finally got back to them, I had to see if I could have any say in the song choices and when we landed on doing a Cure song, then I knew it would be okay and I felt good about it. That’s when I agreed.
Can you talk about that song choice? How do you think it played to your strengths?
It was definitely in my range, and because I like it so much, I was happy to sing it, so I feel like I was projecting it more. My wife and I are massive Cure fans, we have been since we were young, and we had actually a Cure song for our wedding march, so it had a deeper meaning for me.
Can you talk about the costume? What made Elephant the right choice for you?
They gave me a few options, and I thought that was the coolest looking one and I liked how it was sort of a Transformer meets RoboCop, but it also looked like I could still move in it. All of those factors were what made me decide.
What’d you think of the panelists’ guesses?
I was excited that they thought I was a musician of some kind, which means I must’ve been doing something right. I don’t know, Beto O’Rourke was kind of random. But I think the White House clue threw them off, so I understood.
(Greg Gayne/FOX)
Did you think one of them had a better chance of guessing you than the others?
Maybe Robin [Thicke] because I met him. He, at the very least, was somewhat familiar with me in-person.
You’re not responsible for putting the clues package together, but what’d you think of yours? Is there anything you wished had or hadn’t been included?
Yeah, I think having a drummer threw them off, and I’m not sure what the correlation was. I never was a drummer, so I think that that was just a way to throw them off my trail.
What’s been the response you’ve gotten from people who knew you? Has anyone reached out and said they knew it was you after your performance before the unmasking?
Yeah, actually a friend of mine, a pro-skater, was one of the first ones that texted me after the performance and said, “I know that’s you in the Elephant mask.” … I just texted him back an elephant.
What will you take away from the overall experience of being on the show?
I am capable of singing on some level and that the response was surprisingly good compared to what I was prepared for. I think people are just more excited to guess the characters as opposed to worry about the quality of the singing.
Are you watching the show and guessing along?
I am guessing, yes, but I am not really that savvy to people’s backgrounds, especially newer artists or celebrities, so I don’t get as deeply involved in the guessing. I just enjoy the spectacle.
The Masked Singer, Wednesdays, 8/7c, Fox
