Warning! The following contains spoilers for The Masked Singer episode "The Playoffs: Group A." Read at your own risk!
The Masked Singer goes to extreme lengths to keep the participants secret so their identities aren't exposed ahead of a new season. Keeping that secret is no easy task for celebrities, who often have to lie to those closest to them to protect the integrity of the show. The Llama found himself in this exact predicament in the early stages of Season 3, and had to pretend he hated the series to keep friends from being suspicious.
As those who watched the episode already know, The Llama was Drew Carey. The Price Is Right host revealed that he ran into trouble keeping that secret during the Season 3 premiere, but ultimately managed to throw his friends off the trail with some quick thinking.
I didn’t tell anybody. I'm dating a girl and I told her, because when they offered me the show, I said 'I was thinking of doing this, what do you think?' And my trainer guy who comes to help me stretch a couple times a week. Those are the only two people that knew. I even had friends over to watch the Super Bowl and a bunch wanted to watch The Masked Singer after. I had to play it cool. We watched the first one and everyone was guessing and I said, 'Can we watch something else?' I had to pretend I hated the show [and turned it off before my segment].
Drew Carey managed to get The Masked Singer turned off at his party, and potentially averted the disaster of one of the partygoers outing him as The Llama. Hopefully anyone at the event upset that Carey was so adamant on switching the show off now understands, and forgives The Masked Singer contestant for "hating" one of Fox's hottest shows.
Even the seemingly easy things Drew Carey had to do to fulfill his duties as The Llama were difficult. As luck would have it, The Masked Singer doesn't film all that far away from his day job, but of course working in such proximity greatly increased Carey's risk of exposure. Once again, The Llama had to get crafty to avoid suspicion.
I could walk to set five minutes from where The Price Is Right tapes so when I was doing the fitting, I was on set and I had to go out on my lunch hour and get in my car and pretend I was driving somewhere. I went around the corner on the lot and parked outside and ran in so nobody could see me.
The Masked Singer sounds like a really stressful experience to begin with, and this interview Drew Carey did with Billboard doesn't help that image. Of course, these celebrities do it all for the fans, who typically figure everything out within the first few episodes of the season. Luckily, Season 3 is combating that just a bit this year by staggering the contestant groups so that they aren't all shown in the early episodes. It's a solid solution, especially since making the clues tougher doesn't seem to be working.
The Masked Singer airs on Fox Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET. Stick with CinemaBlend for more on Season 3, and for a look at what else is happening in the world of television and movies.
