Axolotl was just about the cutest Masked Singer costume we’ve ever seen on the show. WWE star Alexa Bliss was revealed as the adorable amphibian after her performance of LeAnn Rimes’ “Can’t Fight The Moonlight” in the March 22 episode. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Alexa about how she conquered her “fear of singing” with The Masked Singer.
“I’ve had friends do The Masked Singer. I watched The Masked Singer and thought it would just be something that would be so fun,” Alexa said about why she decided to do the show. “I really just wanted to face my fear of singing. I had a karaoke situation happen years ago that traumatized me. It’s so small, but it traumatized me from singing for years, especially in front of people. I just wanted to finally face that fear and finally show myself that I could get over that fear because it was such an anxiety trigger for me, but I did it and it was fun. I just wanted to go and have fun with it. It was the best experience.”
Alexa said it helped that she had a “5-foot headpiece” on her as she performed. “My husband [Ryan Cabrera] helped me a lot to kind of get over that fear in that sense because he told me right before we went out as I was starting to panic a little bit,” Alexa revealed. “He was like, ‘Hey, you’ve already faced your fear. You sang for these people already during rehearsal. You’ve done it. You’ve sung in front of people. It’s fine because this is the fun part. This is the time for you to have fun.’ It was really great having him there to help me with that.”
Despite having a massive headpiece to carry during her performance, the 31-year-old admitted that it was more “difficult to perform with the tail. I was afraid that I was going to whip someone with my tail and knock myself over or something. It wasn’t the head that was difficult. Actually, none of it was difficult. I was more concerned about my tail than my head because it really wasn’t heavy. The team created this awesome, intricate internal harness that took all the weight off my head and off my back. All the weight was in my hips, and then my shoulders.”
The Axolotl costume was definitely one of the more unique masks to grace the stage. Alexa told HollywoodLife that she only knew what an axolotl was because of the viral TikTok trend of “people using sharpies to draw around their axolotl in the tank and singing the second Secondhand Serenade song. I didn’t know it was regenerative, and I didn’t know how just like awesome they are. I just knew that one TikTok.”
When she learned how the axolotl can regenerate itself, Alexa saw a lot of herself in the resilient amphibian. “For me, it kind of reminds me of my WWE character,” she told HollywoodLife. “I’ve had to reinvent myself so many times for my own personal self. I don’t like being the same character over and over again, so being able to always adapt and evolve and move forward is kind of how I relate to the Axolotl. Plus, my husband said that I kind of looked like it.”
Alexa noted that she’s become a “more well-rounded person” because of The Masked Singer. “I know I can face my fears, and I know that I can do things that I never thought I could before,” she said. “And now I am more comfortable doing that. There have been times when Ryan will just pull out the guitar, and we’ll both sing a song together just for fun. I would have never done that in a million years. I would have never even sang in front of my husband if it wasn’t for Masked Singer.” New episodes of The Masked Singer season 9 air Wednesdays on FOX.