Spoilers ahead for the October 14 episode of The Masked Singer Season 4 on Fox.
The wacky competition hit The Masked Singer has always been good at delivering surprises to its audience, as well as the judges, who are tasked with publicly trying to figure out who's underneath those elaborate costumes. While some of them are pretty good at putting together the clues, costumes and what they hear from the contestants when they sing or do interviews, viewers have seen how difficult it can be to put a finger on who's been performing. Now that we know who the Baby Alien actually is, though, the contestant has spoken out about why that accent was a "perfect" idea.
This week's episode unmasked the adorable Baby Alien, the show's first costume with both a moving mouth and a puppet that needed to be controlled by the performer. The (surprisingly good) singer under all of that costuming turned out to be retired NFL quarterback and sports commentator Mark Sanchez, who did a lot of good work with that puppet in such a short time. But, one thing that really threw people off when they were trying to guess at his identity was the crazy, sorta Eastern European accent he used when speaking to host Nick Cannon on stage. Sanchez has now revealed why he figured the move was a good idea, telling TVLine:
Yeah, I thought it was a great way to throw the judges off to make sure they couldn’t catch on. And then that essentially took on a life of its own. I started doing the interviews like that, talking to people in the trailer like that. It just became something that you practice. I love that accent so much. I think it’s so funny, and nobody had really done it in the prior seasons. I thought, ‘This is perfect.’
Well, I gotta hand it to Mark Sanchez, because he was right. Not only was his fake accent something that hadn't been employed in previous seasons of The Masked Singer to keep contestant identities hidden, he was also able to successfully keep the judges from guessing who he was by using it. Who knew Mr. Sanchez could be such a solid performer in so many different ways?
After judges Nicole Scherzinger, Robin Thicke, Jenny McCarthy, and Ken Jeong put in their secret first impression guesses for who the Baby Alien could have been, they got a true shock. While they'd looked at the clue package for the contestant and seen that first performance of George Michael's "Faith," nothing had prepared them for the accent that would come when Baby Alien first spoke. After that point, while they seemed to assume that it was an accent the person didn't really have naturally, it still led them to guess that the performer was everyone from a famous comedian to Cobra Kai's Ralph Macchio, and David Schwimmer to Freddie Prinze Jr.
While the accent worked wonders at keeping Mark Sanchez's true identity hidden, as he mentioned in his interview, it began to take on a life of its own after he used it that first time. He probably assumed it would have been even odder to start off with the accent and then drop it, so he just decided to keep the ruse going every time he spoke while in costume. Luckily, even though it was a lot of additional work, Sanchez loved playing around with the accent, which I'm sure made his dedication to it much easier to handle.
The 2020 Major League Baseball World Series will preempt The Masked Singer for the next few weeks, but when the popular show returns, you can expect more new episodes from Season 4 to air Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. Until then, be sure to see what else you can watch by checking out our guide to fall TV!
