3 days Ago By Meredith Jacobs, TV Insider
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Masked Singer Season 13 Episode 10 “The Lucky 6: Merging of the Masks.”] And then there were five. The Masked Singer is getting closer to the reveal of the Season 13 winner.
In the Wednesday, April 16, episode, the “Lucky 6” — Boogie Woogie, Coral, Mad Scientist, Nessy, Paparazzo, and Pearl — took to the stage again in hopes of impressing enough to continue on. But one had to go home, and it was Paparazzo, who was revealed to be actor Matthew Lawrence . (His brother, Joey Lawrence , competed as the Walrus in Season 8.
) Below, Lawrence opens up about his time on the show. “I was taking it very seriously, but I still wanted to have fun with it, right? You can’t go too serious for yourself when you’re dressed like that.” What made you say yes? Did you have any hesitations? Matthew Lawrence: Oh my gosh, yeah.
I have two kind of fears. I’ve got a fear of heights and I got a fear of singing on stage because I had a terrible experience auditioning for a Broadway show in front of the live audience and the live audience was packed with faces that I knew, and I’ll be straight about it. I didn’t do the prep that I needed to.
I should have been rehearsing with a pianist for at least a week. I just had a track that I was singing to. And I get on stage and the pianist starts playing like a piano player would do, starts playing some of the harmonies I had no idea were in the song.
I froze up, couldn’t sing. I literally walked off stage. It was one of the worst auditions of my life, and since then, I’ve always kind of had this fear.
So when The Masked Singer called, I was like, there is no way. And then my friends around me were like, “You know, you get to wear a mask. Maybe this is one of those moments where you can get over your fear because people really don’t know it’s you.
” And I was like, “You know what? This is that period in my life where I’ve said there’s no fear anymore, and I’m getting to that point in life where I don’t take chances, I might not get these chances ever again.” So it was like, I’m going to start saying yes to things and especially things that I fear, and that was this. So that’s the reason why I did it.
Which Broadway show and song? Well, it was for Cry Baby , the Johnny Depp movie, the adaptation of that. Obviously, I don’t even know if they made it or not. I don’t know what happened to that show.
I literally blacked it out of my mind. But it was for that. They were expecting me to get it.
They flew me out. They don’t do that for Broadway. They flew me out.
They put me up, and it was a great opportunity and yeah, it’s one of the few that I’ve really bombed. Let’s talk about that Paparazzo costume. Well, besides the size 18 shoe and the 30 pound cowl that had a rod that went down my back, so there was no movement basically — it was tough.
And singing through that and then not seeing anything, there’s choreography. I was like, guys, I can’t. So, I had to get the dancers to body check me into position, and it was hilarious.
It was almost like a rolling ball out of control on stage, and you’re just like, oh, I just got to stay on my feet. It was fun. What went into your song choices? They were kind of random.
The show asked you to put in these songs that you want to sing, and I sung none of the songs that I put in. Because they had these theme nights, so you got to pick a song within the theme, and then other people want songs, so you just sort of get lucky. The first song, [“The Door” by] Teddy Swims, that was one of the artists that I put that I really like.
But I didn’t pick that song, obviously, because again, a lot of these songs have been sung on the show and you can’t re-sing songs. So the Teddy Swims songs was an artist that I picked, but outside of that, none of those songs I picked really. They were just kind of like, this is sort of what’s available to sing.
And then I could maneuver between one or two songs kind of a thing. Did you have any songs in mind if you continued on that you really wanted to do or maybe a genre because of the theme nights? Absolutely. Now they’ve got me.
I’ve got the bug now. Yes. Now every time I hear a song, I’m like, “That’s the song I should have sang on Masked Singer !” [ Laughs ] So yeah, I mean, there’s tons of songs I would like to sing on that show now.
Talk about the panelists’ guesses, because Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg did figure you out. Yes. I don’t know how anybody didn’t figure — it was obvious to me.
I was like, they’re going to know the minute I walk out there. I don’t know. I thought the clues were really on the nose, but that makes it fun, I guess.
Did you come into this expecting anyone specific from the panel to figure you out? No. I really came into this blind. I hadn’t really watched the show.
I’d only seen the social clips like a lot of things these days. We don’t really sit through the long form anymore, so I’d seen a bunch of social clips, so I kind of got the gist. But no, I had really no preconceived notions at all about what this was going to be other than I had talked to my older brother, Joe, who had done one, but he only did one night.
He only did a surprise ‘90s night and then exited, so he didn’t get the full experience. So I really didn’t know. Yeah, I was going to ask, did you get any advice from him? Yeah, absolutely.
He told me not to sing this one song, and he was right. [ Laughs ] He was right. But I’m not going to say which.
Who else knew that you were doing this? You’re not allowed to tell anybody. You literally sign legal paperwork to not tell anybody. So outside of obviously my brothers and my mom and my dad and my girlfriend, nobody knew.
That’s it. What are you going to take away from the entire experience? Again, that I think it’s really important, sometimes we have these fears and these things in our mind that grow to such a large scale, and it’s really important to minimize that and get over your fears and really kind go out there. It can be really fun.
And I’ll tell you, there was one moment, the only moment that I really had on that stage where all that kind of melted away was the “Hallelujah” song, and that was one of the one moments where I actually felt for a moment that I was singing to an audience on stage and it was in harmony. I was in harmony with the audience. I felt it.
I felt maybe what an artist who performs on stage like that feels like, and it’s an amazing feeling. It’s very similar or comparable when you’re filming a big comedy scene, you get a big laugh. You get that connection with the audience.
It’s a wonderful experience. I would definitely do it again. I loved the fact that I got over it.
I got over that fear. It’s awesome. Yeah, that “Hallelujah” performance was so good.
Oh, thank you. Well, I think it’s just because it just related because I was being organic. I wasn’t thinking about the song.
It was the one time I actually just sang. What surprised you the most about being on the show? The isolation. You are like this clouded figure in the mist, and people are ushering you around and you’re all cloaked all the time.
You’re literally cloaked from the time you go into your little change room to anywhere. If you leave that change room, you are cloaked and you got people around you, and that was crazy. It’s not like celebrity-ism that I was experiencing.
It was almost like some sci-fi villain or something. It was very odd. It was a very interesting experience, but it was fun.
It was really cool. A lot of people talk about the isolation. I feel like it’s something you can’t understand until you experience it.
It’s wild. You’re literally wearing a sweater that says, don’t talk to me. That’s crazy.
I love interacting with people, especially the crew. So that was a tough part for me. And I did get to bond with a few of the crew members, which was great, but I would’ve loved to been able to just be out there with the crew hanging out and talking, but you just can’t do it.
So are you going to do some singing now in the future? Who knows? Stay tuned. We’ll see. Maybe.
Hey, if an opportunity, like I said, I’m going to say yes, so we’ll see. I don’t know. The Masked Singer , Wednesdays, 8/7c, Fox More Headlines:.
