Bella Thorne was the latest star to be unmasked on Wednesday's all-new episode of The Masked Singer, and even the talented multi-hyphenate -- who's gearing up to release new music this year -- admits that performing on the massively popular Fox competition show was a nerve-wracking experience!
"I really wanted to do [The Masked Singer] because I just really want people to hear my live voice compared to my live voice on my album that'll come out this year," Thorne told ET's Deidre Behar on Thursday. "But really, I was so nervous I was gonna hate it, 'cause I'm a scaredy cat. Openness, live singing, live in front of everybody, like, I'm singing Peggy Lee, I'm nervous, what if they don't like my voice? The judges are judging me, oh God! I was so scared."
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Ultimately, Thorne says she had a great time performing on the show, and while "half of me was relieved" when she got unmasked, she admitted that she was also "pretty sad" the experience was over.
"I'm like, 'Oh I loved that show. That was really fun, guys, wasn't it?'" she recalled telling her team. "The producers and production, everybody was like, super, super sweet. It's just a really well taken care of show."
While she is gearing up to drop her third studio album, What Do You See Now?, later this year, Thorne has a much longer resume as an actress, and said that performance background helped her on the show. "I think I really liked playing the character more than I liked the singing, because singing is such a nerve-wracking experience. But character stuff I'm kind of good at."
As for her choice of character, the elaborate and elegant swan, she said the frills and feathers were another way to throw viewers off when guessing her identity.
"They gave me quite a few to choose from, [but] I didn't see anything super tomboy or rockstar," she recalled. "And because there wasn't anything super tomboyish, I thought, I have to go to the opposite side of the spectrum, which is super girly. And then I was like, that's good, because a lot of fans don't think of me as girly."
In fact, Thorne revealed that only her sister, mother and assistants knew of her Masked Singer casting, and since her unmasking, "there have definitely been some people that I didn't know watch the show" that reached out to her about her secret Swan identity, like her friend and collaborator, rapper Desiigner.
While the swan costume added some "really interesting" logistics on stage -- sometimes she had to hold her microphone up to her eyeholes because the mic hole wasn't allowing her vocals to carry through -- Thorne had no trouble at all when it came to choosing which songs to perform. After singing "Fever" by Peggy Lee and "I Hate Myself for Loving You" by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, she already had plans for the next few weeks.
"The next song was going to be 'Changes' by xxxtentacion," she revealed. "I was going to do 'The Climb' by Miley Cyrus... I f***ing love 'The Climb,' man."
Even though she's been eliminated, Thorne said she's happy The Masked Singer's third season is continuing to air for now, as many other shows are shutting down amid the coronavirus pandemic.
"The Masked Singer coming out right now was a perfect time, because families are all together on their couch," she said. "They want a reason to smile or make a joke, because the world is so dark right now. It's actually, I think, a good time to create some laughs."
As for what she's binge-watching as medical experts urge isolation and social distancing, Thorne listed some recommendations: "I am watching The Sinner. Just finished The Outsider. Amazing. Love Jason Bateman so hard... Watching Atlanta -- Donald Glover, another super amazing creative to look at and study. I'm about to watch Wrinkles the Clown.... it's a [documentary]. It's about this clown that became super famous in Florida, because people were calling it on their kids to scare them. Super creepy clown. You have to look it up."
The Masked Singer airs Wednesdays at 8pm PT/ET on Fox. See more on this season of the singing competition show in the video below.
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