Warning! The following contains spoilers for The Masked Singer’s Season 8 episode “TV Theme Night.” Read at your own risk!
The Masked Singer Season 8 is underway, but longtime fans almost certainly noticed the major changes. The new format, which allows for more reveals at the cost of less time to guess, received a polarizing reception amongst the online fandom and is certainly taking some getting used to. With that said, recent contestant and Shark Tank mainstay Daymond John apparently doesn't see the changes as a problem, as he has addressed how the magic of the show is still there.
I spoke to Daymond John following his exit episode on The Masked Singer and asked the business mogul about what’s special about the Fox series that led to its longevity on primetime. John shared his thoughts on the series, and acknowledged some of the backlash at the beginning with the format change:
I see a lot of people are upset at the way they changed the format of the show. But I think that making a show unpredictable, bringing new elements to it, bringing new people to it, the masks, and I mean the creativity of what goes into that show [makes it successful]. But also, people seeing other people vulnerable. I think that is a human connection.
People watch The Masked Singer for the clues and the big reveals of who is under the mask, but Daymond John offered an additional perspective that makes me want to revisit the past seasons with a Hulu subscription. John spoke about the human element involved in it all, and while that may not be top of the mind for those who watch, it’s certainly a factor.
The Masked Singer does often touch on vulnerability, which could be anything from a celebrity with a hidden singing talent we didn’t know about or even moments of vulnerability in their career. This season, Montell Jordan spoke about his reaction to seeing how fans largely only knew him from his hit song after an internet death hoax. There’s also Eric Idle, who used the platform to announce his successful battle and private struggle with pancreatic cancer.
Daymond John continued to talk about the vulnerable element to The Masked Singer, and likened it to the hit series he’s a part of: Shark Tank. John revealed that the concept pulled him in, and made him realize that it’s similar to what others do when they come on his show:
On Shark Tank you see people who had nothing, who are risking everything. Aren’t most of us like that? You see people on The Masked Singer…when you strip them down and you take that mask off them, that’s it. That’s all they have. That little voice, and how they can project themselves. Hopefully, you’ll like it but, purely, the pressure is on them. I think that people relate to that. I think that’s what made the show attractive to me. The team, no matter how great the mask was and everything else, it was up to me at the end of the day to hopefully pull it through.
The business mogul gave it the good old college try, and while he made it through the first round, he wasn’t able to hold his own in the Battle Royale. It didn’t take a Fortune Teller to foresee that his time on the show was coming to an end once Harp started singing, and that he was yet another one-and-done episode contestant for the season (check out the full list of reveals so far here). John noted to CinemaBlend that his expectations for competing were low, however, so there were no hard feelings in losing out to Harp.
The Masked Singer airs on Fox on Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET. Season 8 is cruising right along, but now that Harp is officially in the semi-finals, fans will finally get a new group to further evaluate the new format and decide for themselves how they feel about it.
