The latest unmasked contestant dishes on her famous family, and why she passed on doing the show previously.
Warning: This article contains spoilers about Wednesday’s episode ofThe Masked Singer.
The Phoenix has taken its final flight onThe Masked Singerstage.
Michael Becker/FOX
Were you a fan ofThe Masked Singerbeforehand?
CAITLYN JENNER:Oh, I had seen the show, yes.
And actually, I was asked to do it much earlier, and I said no.
Caitlyn Jenner joins Fox News as contributor.Robin Marchant/WireImage
I don’t need to do it.
Now all of a sudden I had nothing but time.
And so I said yes.
Then I panicked a little bit.
“Oh my God, I’ve got to sing and dance!”
And, yeah, it was a big time commitment.
It was a lot of work.
The Phoenix seemed like a really great symbolic choice for you.
But I saw the work that went into that.
That was nothing compared to what the costume designers forThe Masked Singerhave to do.
First of all, we started months in advance, figuring out what the character was going to be.
I wanted a character Phoenix that was not really masculine, but not really feminine.
I get criticized for it all the time.
I can handle it; I really don’t care.
So I got to kind of play this gender neutral character.
And so we started coming up with some designs for it.
Make it a little bit more masculine.
Did you tell anyone you were doing the show?
You are sworn to secrecy when you do that show.
You sign paper after paper.
You cannot talk about it.
And I had a couple of issues here.
One, I had these songs that I had to learn, okay?
And so I called up my son, Brandon [Jenner].
Brandon is an extraordinarily good singer.
He’s got his own band.
He writes all his own music.
He does everything himself.
He’s got his own studio in his house a few miles away.
I tell Brandon, “Guess what?
He goes, “Oh, my God, this is so cool.
I’m gonna help!”
So I went down there and started working on this.
I had three songs down.
Unfortunately I only got to one.
I had three songs down, I was ready to go.
I was doing a Temptations song “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.”
So I was ready for that one.
3-2-1, go.”
But it was not easy.
I mean, not only did I have to learn all these words.
I mean, I have a new appreciation for Jennifer Lopez.
My hat’s off to that girl, what she can do, that is tough to do.
My mind is like so confused.
And so anyway, Brandon helped me with a lot.
So obviously he had to know.
I told both of them because we’re really close.
And I said, “you could’t believe it, girls, this is what I’m doing.”
They didn’t want you to do it?
Well, I said, “Why?
I love a good challenge, number one, you know that.
Number two, we’re living through this pandemic.
I’ve got nothing else going on right now.
They asked me to do this thing.
Why not step out of the box, try something new?”
You know, I really didn’t realize how difficult it was going to be at that time.
I thought, eh, I can do this.
But it was a lot of work.
What surprised you the most about doing the show?
How much I sucked at doing “TiK ToK.”
I thought I would get it down better than that.
I had practiced it so much.
I literally had that song going through my head for the next week after that show was on.
“TiK ToK” is tough, I mean, timing wise.
And it really wasn’t the right pitch for me or anything about it.
It was difficult to do.
So that’s probably the biggest surprise.
How do you feel about that?
In some ways sad, because it’s kind of an end of an era for the family.
So that’s kind of sad.
I think it brought our family so close together for so many years.
And, you know, everybody kind of goes their own direction.
And fortunately, because of the show, it opened up other opportunities for them.
So for that we’re forever grateful to the show and what it was able to do.
And they’ve all been very smart, so I’m not worried about any of them.
They’ll all stay very busy and who knows what else they’ll do in the future?
