The Masked Singer 's Giraffe dunks on Robin Thicke for not guessing his identity: 'He's terrible'
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Michael Becker/FOX
Warning: This article contains spoilers about Wednesday's episode of The Masked Singer.
The Giraffe is headed back to the savannah.
On this week's episode of The Masked Singer, the orange giant was sent packing, and he was revealed to be actor — and onetime rapper — Brian Austin Green. Here, he talks to EW about why he chose his costume, whether he'd revive his music career, and what he thought of longtime friend and panelist Robin Thicke's (incorrect) guesses about his identity.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why did you want to do The Masked Singer?
BRIAN AUSTIN GREEN: Honestly, I hadn't really thought about it before they called and they asked, and I was bored. [Laughs] We'd all been sitting at home. Every industry was shut down. So just looking at the way this show works and knowing that it's not a competition show, it's really a chance for families to sit in front of the TV and just have fun, and try and guess along with a panel about who could possibly be wearing a costume and performing on stage. And it just seemed like a really good idea, especially now while people are at home, families are at home, and binge-watching things. Just to give them something new and fresh to watch that's entertaining and that's fun. And I think that's exactly what the show delivers. It's a fun show for people to watch and sort of play along with and feel like they're a part of.
Did you watch the show before you signed on to do it?
I'm not a huge TV watcher, but I had seen it a few times. It's a really fun show. And their plans, especially this season for doing it during COVID and all of that, were really ambitious, and I kind of wanted to be a part of something that was setting the new standard for how things could work during this time, in a safe way.
Did your kids know you were doing the show?
My original thought was, "Oh, it'll be fun, I can watch it with the kids" and all that. And the show's on so late that I watched the season opener with my kids thinking they'll see the Giraffe costume, and it will be fun because I won't say anything. And they fell asleep. It was like 8:15. And they were literally completely sound asleep. I took a picture of it. It's pretty funny. I'll post it once the show airs and people know that it was me. So I'm curious to see since tonight is the second and final episode for me if they'll stay up late enough to watch that. I doubt it, but I'll try.
How much say did you have in the Giraffe costume?
I had final say. Early on, they asked me if I had any ideas for a costume. And I said, "You know what? That's not what I do. I'm not really good at picking costumes and stuff like that, and you guys have won Emmys doing it. So who am I to say, and honestly, you guys probably don't want to f—ing listen to me anyway. So you guys just come up with a few different costumes that you really like, and then I'll pick from those." And they came back with two. It was a Zoom call — most of what I did this season was on Zoom, because of COVID and all that — and they had two pictures: They had one of a Serpent and one of the Giraffe. And the Serpent seemed much more character-specific, like, "Okay, well as the Serpent, he looks this way, and so you sort of have to perform these kind of songs and act this way." Just for me, it didn't give me as much freedom as the Giraffe. The Giraffe was this really interesting character. He's super-Victorian, but he's also a giraffe. Those two things don't really go together, so that's fun. So then I can do "Let's Get It Started" as my first performance and people really didn't expect rap and dancing and singing to come out of an 8 foot-tall Victorian giraffe. Nobody saw that one coming, I don't think. I sure didn't.
What was the process like in choosing your songs?
It was really fun. We had all sorts of things lined up just in case, because that's sort of how it works. You pick the first block of songs, and you prepare them, and you rehearse them, and you choreograph them and you get them ready. So if you stay that long, you do those songs. And if you don't, it's like, "Okay, well, my next song would have been whatever, but I don't have to do that song now. Thank God." [Laughs] The first song that I wanted to do was a Robin Thicke song, "When I Get You Alone," and it starts off with Beethoven's Fifth. I thought it was really fitting with a giraffe costume and the Victorian theme and all of that. So their process is, you pick a song, and then you work with their vocal coach. And the vocal coach, Tim, and I, we had to do most everything over Zoom. So we would rehearse a little bit, and he would coach me and give me some ideas and some things and then he would record it, and then play the recording for the powers that be to see if everybody was game or not. And so I had that song in mind, and I sang it. And then I talked to him the next time on Zoom, and he was like, "Okay, so we're going to try this other song." [Laughs] The songs just kept getting less vocal and less vocal, because I'm obviously not a singer. And to me, if I'm not a strong vocalist, I might as well make it a party while I'm on stage, might as well do stuff that people want to get up and dance to. That was the goal. And I feel like that's been accomplished with both songs.
At one point the panelists thought you were your Beverly Hills, 90210 costar Jason Priestley. Did you think they were going to guess you when they got there?
Yeah, they got on the Jason train, and then at one point they also got on a Transformers Shia LaBeouf train. And they went Transformers at first, and they mentioned Megan [Fox], and I was like, oh, man, they got it. They know who I am. And then all of a sudden, Ken [Jeong] said Shia, and it was just like, "Oh, man, you couldn't be more wrong. Thank you. That's great." And then they just completely went off course, and they couldn't right the ship at all. And that's when I knew as far as [the panelists] go, I'm in the clear and they're never going to guess me at this point.
Fans thought maybe you were Fred Durst or Vanilla Ice or someone from Hamilton. Did you keep up with the fan theories?
So the producer of the show, he would text me different articles to see who they think the Giraffe is. And it was entertaining, because I wouldn't have done it on my own, but it's amazing when you're in a costume, how people's minds just run. They get hooked on an idea of who they think it is. And with the Fred Durst thing it was like they start finding everything that possibly could fit, and then they make it fit from the clue package. And it's funny, if you sit back now that you know it's me, and you listen to the clue package, it's like, oh, of course. They're dead-on, down to the fact that in the clue package, Giraffe has a robin sitting on his shoulder. I grew up with Robin Thicke, so that makes total sense. But if you didn't know, and you didn't put those things together, and you were putting them together in some other way thinking it was somebody else, they can be very misleading.
Are you going to give Robin a hard time for not guessing you?
Oh yeah. That's the first thing I do. And no disrespect to him, because he's a super-nice guy, but he sucks at this. He's terrible. I told the producers early on, if there's anybody on this panel that's going to guess me, it's him because we know each other so well. He knows the way that I speak, and the timbre of my voice. For three years, we were best friends — we were at each other's house every day. When Robin and I had a group when we were kids, we were both on Growing Pains performing as our group. Ben Seaver was our manager or some crazy thing like that. He knows me really well. And so the first time I performed, he even said, "You ever have that thing when you recognize a voice, but you can't put a face to it?" He said that, and my first thought in the costume was, "Oh f—, he's got it. He's going to know who I am." And then he just went way off course. Like, all of a sudden he thinks it's Travis Barker because of how he walks, and it's like how I walk? Come on, man, you were on the right path. What do you mean how I walk? I'm in a costume, I could walk any f—ing way I choose to, you have no idea! I'm not limited by anything. Walking. That's ridiculous. [Laughs] So yeah, I thought for sure Robin would figure it out, and he couldn't have been more wrong, but I still love him.
Does you doing the show mean that you're thinking of reviving your own music career? Would you consider that?
No, I'm way too old. I would hurt myself. [Laughs] I have no aspirations of becoming an artist again. That ship has sailed.
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