The Night Owl was revealed during the February 22 episode of The Masked Singer as “Lost In Your Eyes” singer Debbie Gibson. Debbie performed a sensational rendition of “Fernando” on ABBA Night. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Debbie about her quick turnaround before the show.
“I didn’t know I was doing the show until about 16 hours before. I’m still shaking my head that this happened,” the 52-year-old told HollywoodLife. “I’d gotten calls about doing the show before, and I’ve been touring heavily in the last couple of years. And then the phone rings as I’m sitting down in my seat on a plane from New York to Vegas on the 23rd, which is the one-year anniversary of my mom’s passing, so I do believe my mom was still managing me from up above going, ‘Hey, here’s a fun gig for you.’ My manager goes, ‘Are you sitting down?’ I go, ‘Yeah.’ She’s like, ‘How would you like to be on The Masked Singer tomorrow?” She’s like, ‘We’re not sure yet but somebody might have to drop out due to illness.'”
She continued, “I got to Vegas, and the call came in: you’re on if you want to do it. So I was driven to my house. I got repacked, got driven to LA, and got in about 10 p.m. and was onset at 8 a.m. Tim and the costume department and I collaborated and put my fabulous Night Owl together, and then I was learning ‘Fernando.’ I mean, it was so crazy. It was like jumping out of an airplane. I don’t actually want to ever jump out of an airplane. This is my version of jumping out of an airplane.”
With the Night Owl costume, Debbie wanted something she could move in. She was drawn to the costume because it felt “eccentric and glamorous and rock and roll. There was a badass element to that mirrored bodysuit and then the feathered cape and the metallic wings. I own one of Liberace’s glass mirrored pianos, and this reminded me of if Liberace was an owl. It was very eccentric rock’n’roll to me.”
She admitted that the Night Owl costume was “challenging” to wear. “As much as it would have been fun to go on and do more performances. I don’t think I could have sustained carrying this costume day after day because it was really heavy on the upper body,” she told HollywoodLife.
Debbie pointed out that The Masked Singer is “not for the faint of heart.” She joked that she would have “had to have a chiropractor on set for sure if I had been on for more weeks.”
Jenny McCarthy was the celebrity panelist to guess Debbie’s identity correctly. The singer wasn’t surprised that Jenny figured out her voice. “I think my voice is super distinctive. For people who know me, they know. I think I’ve sounded pretty much the same since I was 15 years old,” she said. “There have been varying degrees of my voice having more depth or more Broadway resonance or whatever, but it’s basically always me. So I said from minute one, if anyone’s going to guess me, it’s going to be Jenny. So I was not surprised, as she said her husband would disown her as if she didn’t get me. I knew she’d know.”
Following The Masked Singer, Debbie is getting back on the road. “I’m going to Orlando and doing a thing with Joey Fatone who, funny enough, is also a Masked Singer alum,” Debbie said. “I’m doing another I think it’s 15 cities, and there are going to be a few more dates announced that I’m doing. I did a tour last year to support my current album The Body Remembers, and there was a demand for more dates, which is lovely. I’m calling it The Body Remembers Encore tour. We just announced that. There’s some magical thing about this week for me. I don’t know what it is. This week is also the anniversary of my debut in Cabaret on Broadway 20 years ago, too. So I’m getting ready to tour again and I’m working on some TV movie projects and things like that.”
Debbie strives to always have “creative juices flowing. I’m just always trying to keep up with all the ideas, but my album is on my label. I released a holiday album this past winter and also did a holiday tour. I’ve been busy. It’s been an amazing, creative, and entrepreneurial time.” The Masked Singer season 9 airs Wednesdays on FOX.