Adrienne Bailon Houghton came in third place on The Masked Singer season 2. The 36-year-old wowed us every week with her incredible performances as the Flamingo. The extravagant costume featured a long beak and tons of feathers. Adrienne talked with HollywoodLife and admitted that she had to train like an athlete in order to be able to perform at the highest level while wearing the costume. “I was super focused on being in the best condition to do this,” Adrienne told HollywoodLife. “I felt like I had to train like an athlete to have the stamina and have a lack of oxygen inside of a mask. I pretty much felt like I was in a boot camp of some sort. I would wake up in the morning and do 45 minutes of cardio. Even when I came back to The Real and I had lost 25 pounds, people were like, ‘How did you lose the weight?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, I do follow a vegan diet. I do exercise.’ But I have to be honest, a big part of it was definitely shooting the show. I lost maybe the initial 15 to 20 [pounds] during the show. The way you sweat inside of that costume, I was losing like a pound after every performance.”
In each of her performances as the Flamingo, Adrienne really moved around the stage and showed off her dance moves. “I knew when I picked my costume I wanted it to be something fun,” she said. “I was very specific about the fact that I definitely wanted to be a character that danced and I wanted to be challenged with choreography. It was important to me that I had a costume that I could move in.”
Throughout her time filming the show, keeping everything top secret was a priority. Adrienne revealed that only her mother, her husband, her assistant, and her management team knew that she was even on the show. “For everyone else, it was like a major lie and I feel like I was honestly very antisocial during the filming time. I didn’t go out to dinners and I missed a bunch of things because I just felt like I couldn’t go out and lose my voice or be talking too much.” Not even her fellow co-hosts of The Real knew!
“They had no idea until the ‘Lady Marmalade’ promo went out and it was on Instagram and people were sending it to them,” Adrienne continued. “Then they definitely cornered me on the show and were like, ‘Don’t lie, are you the Flamingo?’ I was like, ‘Absolutely not. I would never lie to you. I keep it real.’ And then two months later, ‘Hi guys, just kidding, I’m the Flamingo.'”
Adrienne also gave an inside glimpse into how the clues are chosen for each celebrity contestant. “We actually sit down with producers and we tell them our lives,” Adrienne said. “We tell them about things that our fans might know and things that they might not know or things that only die-hard fans know. Like the fact that Ricky Martin handpicked me out of my church choir to do a performance with him at Madison Square Garden. It’s little things like that. If you’re a true, true fan, you would notice. And then, obviously, the cheetah clues.”
The talk show host gushed that The Masked Singer was “hands down, honestly, the most fun I’ve ever had in my entire career. It was challenging. It was fun. It was emotional. I was facing my fear. There’s a freedom that comes from putting on that mask and trying to do things that you never would.” As for who Adrienne would love to see do the show next, she said: “I would love to see Tamera [Mowry-Housley] do the show. I think she’d be super awesome. I also think Amber Riley from Glee would be a powerhouse.” The Masked Singer will return for season 3 after the Super Bowl on Feb. 2, 2020.