‘The Masked Singer’s Squiggly Monster on Feeling ‘Competitive’ & Those Eyes
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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 4, Episode 6 of The Masked Singer, “The Group C Play Offs – Funny You Should Mask.”]
All eyes were on the Squiggly Monster, but it wasn’t enough to keep him around another week.
The Masked Singer bid adieu to another Group C contestant — Mushroom, Broccoli, and Jellyfish remain — when Squiggly Monster was eliminated (after performing The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”), and under the mask was none other than actor and stand-up comedian Bob Saget (Full House, How I Met Your Mother).
“There was a choreography change at the last minute, so you know how actors, singers or dancers like to blame someone else,” Saget tells TV Insider of his elimination. “I had such a great experience doing the show. It was so much fun with the voice coach and with the choreographers, they were amazing.
“I went through three different songs. I only got to two of them, because I didn’t think I was going to be bounced, but I knew I had a problem because the head is so heavy that it had a strap that constricted the throat, so for ‘Satisfaction,’ I was like, ‘Oh, my voice cracked. Oh, that wasn’t effortless,’ because I didn’t have a problem the week before with ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain,'” he explains. “There were just a couple of things that happened, as they do in show business.”
Here, Saget takes us inside his Masked experience.
How did you doing The Masked Singer now come about? You spoke about wanting to be part of the joy of it during these tough times, so was it just perfect timing?
Bob Saget: It was really interesting. I’d been asked, and my schedule didn’t allow it: I was on tour and I was doing some other show. But I’m friends with everybody. I’ve known Robin [Thicke] since he’s a kid, Ken [Jeong] is a dear friend, and I’ve met the ladies, Jenny [McCarthy] and Nicole [Scherzinger], and it was just a sweet thing to be doing it.
(Michael Becker/FOX)
But the weird part was, I guess with quarantine and wanting to perform so badly — I had a tour I had canceled — I became Squiggly Monster, and there weren’t a lot of places that were available to do any entertaining and make people feel good and that show, I couldn’t stop laughing. I’d watched it before when Tom Bergeron was on and they thought I was the Taco, it’s so funny. A grown man going, “Wait, who’s Jellyfish?” I don’t know why I feel competitive with these other characters. “Mushroom, Mushroom, what’s Mushroom got that I don’t got?” It was quite a hilarious experience, but I wanted to do it. It was just timing, yeah.
After the unmasking, you mention that they sent you a picture of the Squiggly Monster. Why this costume?
Yeah, I had a couple choices, and they said, “Who would you like to be?” and it was — eyes down would be the pun, it’s all puns when they describe Squiggly — I just went, “That’s it,” because I’ve never seen anything that outlandish. You don’t see a mascot uniform like that, and it was just this wonderful, over-the-top, joyous thing of multi-colors. He seemed to be a symbol of all love and differences everywhere in a living being.
I was disappointed the eyes didn’t twirl around. I was like, “Can you get the eyes to twirl around?” And they went, “No, they’re going to be fixed, I’m sorry, we can’t, we’re not going to do that,” I think it was for many different reasons, audio and other things. As you can see, it’s an over-the-top costume, and their costume designer’s just a genius, she’s won an Emmy this past year for those costumes. It was not a hard decision to choose which one to be.
You spoke a bit about the head, but can you talk about moving around and performing with the extra arms?
Yeah, it was very cumbersome, and that’s what I didn’t expect. The arms were fine because with filament, they had them hooked up to the other arms, but the one funny problem was that they were lobster claws, so to hold the microphone, they had to put a little band around the mic and hook it up to my fingers so it wouldn’t fall out. Then they had double-stick tape. I always walk around with a mic in my hand anyway, it’s my life as a stand-up or my podcast, I hold the mic. People go, “Why do you hold the mic?” “I don’t know, I’m a mic holder.” It was a natural weird thing. I did get a hand cramp a little bit, a little carpal tunnel.
But moving around was not that hard in the body because it was kind of like an Oscar the Grouch kind of body. But the head was very heavy, and I have kind of like a bird neck, so it was a balancing act. I couldn’t really throw my head around, and it does constrain the voice a little bit. That’s my hall pass disclaimer.
And then there’s the panelists’ guesses, like you mentioned you know them, and everyone says Ken goes on a bit with his…
Yeah, what was interesting — and I knew [host] Nick [Cannon] for years, too — so it was really weird because they guessed me kind of right off the bat. The first episode, they didn’t quite guess me. Ken loves to riff and go and go and go, and so do I, and he is just one of the sweetest people that I know. And we were texting that week, he goes, “You should come on The Masked Singer and maybe be a guest. We’re having different guests. Tonight’s show is Wayne Brady,” and I’m like, I know Wayne. So I got to see all these people I know.
But Ken knew it but didn’t know it and Robin and I have quite a history, so it was pretty emotional in some ways just to see. Robin brought up I spoke at his dad’s memorial — I don’t know how much of it made the show — but it was quite moving.
The only part is, “take it off, take it off,” it sounds like I’m a stripper or something when they yell that, but then getting revealed and it’s fun to actually perform the song at the end without the head on because then you can actually perform it. But the COVID restrictions were amazing, really, it was very safe, it felt very safe, testing constantly. But that head alone, if you’re wearing that, you ain’t getting anything. Nothing gets in or out, including air.
You talked about your songs a bit earlier and said you had three in mind. What was the third?
“Folsom Prison [Blues]” by Johnny Cash, and I was very excited. I had a very, very hot choreography. You know that lyric, “I shot a man in Reno/just to watch him die,” I did the little finger pops with my Squiggly lobster hands.
(Michael Becker/FOX)
The funniest part of doing this show is walking around and you’ve got someone with you. You can’t see, you’ve got a visor on. If I’ve got the Squiggly head off — because a lot of it’s backstage — and the body off, they put you in a sweatshirt that says “Don’t talk to me” and then I’ve got a mask, a visor, and a hoodie, and it’s really quite intense. It was like, “Squiggly on the move,” and that means they hide anybody else. I came in contact with no one. I have no clue who anybody was, but I was jealous of Mushroom, Jellyfish, and Broccoli. That was my jealousy. I had no idea why. “Who’s Broccoli?” Nobody tells you anything. It’s like the CIA. I wish the government was run like The Masked Singer.
What are you going to take away from this entire experience?
It was pure joy. It was just something really fun to do. I never do these kinds of shows, and then I’m on I Can See Your Voice a couple times. I’m on the one on tonight as well. That just felt fun also and while I was doing that, I knew I was going to do The Masked Singer so Ken didn’t know while I was doing I Can See Your Voice.
It was just really fun for me especially during all the stuff we’re going through in the world and in my personal life, not being able to perform and make people feel good, they’re feel-good shows, and tonight especially with all the tension in the air right now, it’s something I would think people would want to have, a huge distraction to have a good time with their family.
The Masked Singer, Wednesdays, 8/7c, Fox
