The newly unmasked celebrity reveals why he lied about being a 60-year-old grandpa from Costa Rica.
Warning: This article contains spoilers about Wednesday’s episode ofThe Masked Singer.
Robopine is headed back to the forest (or perhaps his evil lair?)
Tyrese Gibson.Andrew Toth/Getty Images
afterWednesday night’s episodeofThe Masked Singer.
As EW predicted, the quilled creature was revealed to be singer and actorTyrese Gibson.
What did that moment mean to you?
Tyrese Gibson with Paul Walker.Gregg DeGuire/WireImage
So I personally tried to throw as many people off as I could with my backstory.
I said I was 60 years old.
I said I had two grandkids and I was from Costa Rica.
Robopine performing on ‘The Masked Singer’.Michael Becker/FOX
So I was trying to throw a haymaker in there and really throw people off.
The goal here is to have everybody guessing who is Robopine.
It’s not necessarily something that you might go hee-hee-ha-ha after you talk about Paul.
For me, it’s, “Oh my god, I love him.
It breaks my heart.
It is such a tragedy.”
So I respect the show, but I just kind of thought that particular hint was a little obvious.
What would you have liked to perform next if you’d made it to the next round?
My next song was going to be a Teddy Pendergrass song.
So in my mind, let me go ahead and close it out.
Let me go big.
The Teddy Pendergrass estate and the Marvin Gaye estate, they cleared me to do these songs.
It just kind of all landed the way it was supposed to land, I guess.
I didn’t think I would make it to the end, for some reason.
I was like, I don’t know who else is here.
I don’t know who else is performing.
And I don’t know what adjustments to make with the song choices.
I don’t know.
Should I do more up tempo?
Should I be dancing more?
They just kept everything so private and exclusive and away from the other contestants.
I didn’t know what to do.
Was that costume as deadly as it looked?
It was good to have some additional muscles in my legs.
[Laughs] It really felt like escapism.
It was just fun.
I would do it all over again.
I would just look at myself in the mirror.
And then you just look at God.
How did your family react to you doing the show?
My daughter is the reason I did this show.
I looked at her and I said, “Shayla, get out of here.”
And she said, “Nah dad, I think you should do it.
And I think you’ll win it.
The people on here can’t even sing.”
So she was a real serious vote of confidence.
And I told her, no, I didn’t think I would ever do that.
Then four months later, I got a phone call from my agent.
And he said, “Hey, we just got an offer for you to doThe Masked Singer.
And I said, “Actually, I want to do it.”
And they were like, “Really?”
I say, “Yeah, man.
I think it’d be fun.
And it was like, well, here we go.
It happened, and I actually was surprised that I made it through as many episodes as I did.
What was the experience of the show like for you?
It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
They’ve literally created a world within a world.
Because I kind of had my own moment of, “Oh, no, what is this?”
So my motivation became my daughter.
I can’t say it enough: My 13-year-old gets the credit for me doing this show.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
