The Masked Singer season 3 premiere is just around the corner. Although the hit singing show is currently the No 1 broadcast series, FOX has decided to schedule the premiere after Sunday’s (Feb 2) Super Bowl game. Usually the big game ends at around 10:30 pm ET or so. The show slides into its regular season slot on Wednesday Feb 5 at 8 pm ET/PT.
What to Expect from The Masked Singer 3
Judges Robin Thicke, Jenny McCarthy, Ken Jeong and Nicole Scherzinger will return to the judges table. Nick Cannon will remain as host. Jamie Foxx will be a guest judge on the premiere. Jason Biggs and Leah Remini will appear on the panel later on in the season. The network will announce more guest judges soon, so stay tuned.
In a Variety piece, Ken notes that the panelists assumed that Jamie was the Fox…because name? The Fox turned out to be the eventual winner, Wayne Brady. “Jamie was already part of the narrative of last season,” Ken said. “He not only fit in, but he was the funniest person on the show. He is the most entertaining panelist on that episode.”
More The Masked Singer S3 Characters! (White Tiger! Astronaut!) (Video)
The Masked Singer Season 3 Format Changes, Costume Photos, MORE
The Masked Singer season 1 featured 12 masks, season 2 kicked it up to 16 masks and on season 3, 18 masks will compete. To keep viewers at home guessing, the producers aren’t introducing all the celebrities at once. The 18 will be divided into THREE groups. The first six will perform every week until whittled down to 3. Lather, rinse and repeat for groups 2 and 3. It will take about 7 episodes to meet every mask. The final 9 contestants from the three groups will come together to compete for the crown.
The first set of six celebrity masks include: Llama, Miss Monster, Robot, White Tiger, Kangaroo…and one more! See the photo gallery below.
The Hollywood Reporter reports another little tweak: “In the third show of each round, we have the contestants’ friends and families in masks,” said Fox reality chief Rob Wade. “We think it’s funny and quirky to see random people stuck in masks talking about their kids. I think [that] humanizes the characters.”
The Masked Singer Season 3 is Not Done Filming
Here’s an interesting tidbit: The season will still be filming while it is airing, “allowing for many more confidentiality breaches.” Showrunner Izzie Pick-Ibarra told THR: “We’ve always been able to hide under the radar a little bit, and this season we obviously cannot do that. It’s going to be very hard to the singers. It’s going to be very hard for our team to just be able to manage that, and then the singers are going to be seeing the show and then coming back to shoot it. So some people may not like what they’ve seen, you know? That makes you worry, too. We haven’t had that situation — it’s like doing a live show in that way.”
Celebrities Want To Disguise Their Voices
“They’ve all seen the show,” executive producer Craig Plestis told Variety. “So now they want to disguise their voice. They don’t want to sing in their genre. They’re very careful about body movement. The game is actually much harder this season because the contestants are making it hard. They don’t want to be uncovered. Everyone came in saying, ‘I want to play this game. I’m gonna win it. They’re never going to guess who I am.’”
But, Wade admits, the problem with singers faking their voices is that they don’t sound as good as they normally do in real life. “There’s a balance between performance and guessability,” he said.
Security for The Masked Singer is Off the Chain
Pick-Iberra tells Billboard that EVERYBODY signs NDAs (non disclosure agreements), including agents and managers. Producers will humiliate anyone who wants to use a phone on set, forcing them to wear a humiliating pageant sash. “We do humiliate them with the sash,” she says, “so they only ask if they need it.
Check out ALL the Celebrity Masks Right Here
FOX has been releasing character photos every day. So far the network has unveiled 15 of the 18 masks: Taco, Mouse, Kitty, Bear, Rhino, Swan, Astronaut, White Tiger, Turtle, Kangaroo, Miss Monster, Llama, Frog, Robot, Banana. Check out photos of the celebrity masks below.
Click on a photo to click through the gallery!
The Masked Singer Season 3 Premiere Photo Gallery
