‘The Masked Singer’: Anteater Admits He ‘Did Not Like the Costume at All’ When He First Saw It
The costumes on “The Masked Singer” are nothing short of stunning every year but, at least in Anteater’s case, it wasn’t a good kind of stunning. The singer behind the mask admitted to TheWrap that, at first, he really couldn’t go for that.
Anteater was one of two contestants eliminated on Wednesday night, ending his run on the show along with Candelabra. At the end of the night, Anteater was revealed to be none other than John Oates, of Hall & Oates fame. And, while he truly loved taking part in the singing competition, he noted that, when he first got the call, he was a little apprehensive, in part because of the outfit he was given.
“It was a very, very soft yes,” Oates told TheWrap. “I said, ‘Well, wait a minute, let me think about this.’ And then I saw a drawing, a rendering of the Anteater, and I’ll be 100% honest, I did not like the costume at all. I said, ‘Ugh, I don’t want to be an Anteater.'”
Oates added that he was eventually “persuaded” that the costume and singing on the show “would be cool and different.” And, as he thought more about it, he wondered if the costume was a low-key attempt at a reference to a certain song of his.
“Wait a minute, are they saying Anteater, and what they really are doing [is] alluding to ‘Maneater,’ and making some weird connection between the two? I thought of that right away, but no one else did. So maybe I’m crazy. But it seemed obvious to me.”
In the end, taping the show fell into a convenient spot in Oates’ schedule, right in the middle of a gap in his tour. So he decided to take a swing.
“I thought to myself, you know, the show has such a great reach, it’s so popular. It would be interesting to be on it,” he explained. “Be able to really kind of be myself in this really weird way and see how my voice was going to be perceived without anyone making the connection between me and Hall & Oates, and the hits, and the ’80s, and all the things that are always kind of associated with me. I thought this is a chance to really just be dealt with completely objectively as a singer.”
“The Masked Singer” airs on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.
The post ‘The Masked Singer’: Anteater Admits He ‘Did Not Like the Costume at All’ When He First Saw It appeared first on TheWrap.
