Warning: This article contains spoilers about Wednesday night’s episode ofThe Masked Singer.
This week’s episode ofThe Masked Singerwas rathermagical.
This episode also introduced this group of masked celebrities to the duel.
Hydra performs on ‘The Masked Singer.'.Michael Becker/FOX
Armadillo and Hydra were revealed to have the lowest votes, so they faced off against each other there.
EW caught up with him ahead of the reveal.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How long did you two know you wanted to doThe Masked Singer?
Mark Sagliocco/FilmMagic
PENN JILLETTE:Well, I guess we’ve been talking about it for a few years.
But the time was finally right.
And that’s too rare in our culture right now.
So I love that about it.
Does this even rank as a one-of-a-kind experience for you?
Not even close to one-of-a-kind experience.
Teller and I have been doing magic together for a combined century.
We have been everywhere in uncomfortable positions.
So, of everybody who’s ever been onThe Masked Singer?
No one was more prepared than Penn and Teller.
Was one of you more hesitant to do the show or were you both completely on board?
Oh, no, no, no.
Teller and I say yes to everything.
The reason you’re alive is to have adventures.
Anybody that asks us to do anything, we almost always say yes.
And, you know, we’re the longest-running headliners in Las Vegas history.
And people are aware of us because we do television when we’re asked.
And as I said, it’s such a sweet and kind show.
And this show, there was not even an instance of hesitation on our parts.
We just said yes before they finished asking the question.
What can you tell me about the inner workings of the costume itself?
We were mostly standing in there.
Although “standing” is not the way you usually picture that word.
We were kind of contorted and bent about in there.
And trying desperately not to fall over.
I mean, we had to sing.
We had to do our job.
We also had to not fall over.
Here’s the next line coming up.
Let’s not fall over.
Now it’s Teller’s turn to sing, let’s not fall over."
Did you guys have to deal with the smoke coming out of the mouths at all?
No, that was above us.
That was radio controlled I believe.
We did do a small amount of puppeteering from inside but not much.
In hindsight, do you wish you’d had a costume that allowed for more movement?
So I’m pretty happy with everything.
We’re not going to go back in time and do things differently.
Whose idea was it to do all the different voices?
Oh, that’s all my partner Teller being so good.
You couldn’t do much in my voice.
My voice sounds like this all the time.
Years of the Carnival I’m carny trash.
So this is the way I sound, and there’s no changing this.
But no one’s heard Teller.
And Teller is actually a fairly good singer.
So it was really fun.
We worked hard with her and it was fun to be singing.
It was a terrific experience.
You were friends with the late and great Bob Saget, who of course wasSquiggly Monster in season 4.
Did he ever talk about the show with you or encourage you to do it?
Well, boy, Bob died right about the time we were booked.
So I certainly would have talked to him.
I would of course give anything to have my friend Bob around.
But that’s not the hand we were dealt, sadly.
During the reveal at the end, it seemed like something was going on.
What was happening on stage?
Let me tell you something there were issues.
I mean, they had to tear the costume apart.
I’d guess it took about 25 or 30 minutes to get us out of a costume.
So whatever you saw, blurred out, was heavily, heavily, edited.
There was all sorts of s—.
It was not easy getting us out of there.
It was not easy.
The costume was not designed to get out of it.
What did you take away from this experience?
And that’s a little hope for us, don’t you think?
