Warning: reported spoilers are ahead for Season 7 of The Masked Singer.
The Masked Singer is a much-debated TV show whenever Fox is airing a new season for fans to watch and guess, but now a celebrity contestant has already reportedly been revealed for the next season, and his identity led Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke to initially walk off. Former New York mayor and controversial Republican politician Rudy Giuliani was reportedly unmasked during filming of the upcoming seventh season, and that resulted in the two judges leaving the stage.
Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke reportedly left the Masked Singer stage – where they have served as judges and panelists from the very beginning – as soon as Rudy Giuliani was unmasked, according to Deadline, while Jenny McCarthy and Nicole Scherzinger are said to have remained behind to do the usual banter with the unmasked contestant. There are no details about how host Nick Cannon reacted to the reveal, but Jeong and Thicke did allegedly return to the stage.
Whether or not they returned in time to join Jenny McCarthy and Nicole Scherzinger in talking to Giuliani is unknown at this time, and it hasn’t been revealed what mask the politician was wearing prior to being voted out. The episode of his unmasking won’t air until Season 7 kicks off next month, unless Fox changes things around to cut Giuliani from the season altogether to avoid airing the walk off. At the time of writing, the network has not commented on the reports of Giuliani’s unmasking or Jeong and Thicke walking off.
Considering the clues that fans have managed to piece together for famous faces (some of whom are arguably far less well-known than Giuliani) and Giuliani’s fairly distinctive speaking voice, I’m guessing it won’t take long for viewers to figure out which mask he is wearing. Not all of the masks for Season 7 have been announced just yet, but a sneak peek called “The Good, The Bad, And The Cuddly” previewed some of them, including a frog wearing a crown, a sassy-looking firefly, a horned gladiator, a Cyclops-looking monster, an animal wearing a spacesuit, and a lemur with sparkly legs. There are undoubtedly more costumes that will be revealed in the weeks as Season 7 approaches.
As far as is known, Giuliani is the first unmasking to provoke such an extreme and immediate reaction from the judges, although not the only polarizing one with political ties. Former Alaskan governor and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin participated as The Bear in Season 3. This also isn’t the first time that a political figure’s attachment to a competition show resulted in some extreme reactions, as something similar happened with ABC’s Dancing with the Stars when Sean Spicer was cast for Season 28, although Spicer said that the other cast members were supportive of him. (The same can’t quite be said of then-co-host Tom Bergeron, who threw some shade.)
See all of what The Masked Singer has in store next when Season 7 premieres on Fox on Wednesday, March 9 at 8 p.m. ET in the 2022 TV schedule.