Masked Singer star Dandelion on how her 'unimaginably hard time' inspired her to release new music
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Warning: This article contains spoilers from Wednesday's episode of The Masked Singer.
Dandelion has officially been weeded out of the competition.
The delicate plant was the first contestant to go home during tonight's space-themed episode of The Masked Singer. As the reigning champion, her elimination came as a bit of a surprise, but the real shocker of the episode was that the only person to correctly guess her identity was Ken Jeong.
Dandelion was unmasked to reveal actress and singer Alicia Witt, whose nearly three-decade career spans everything from the original Dune to Two Weeks Notice to The Walking Dead to Orange Is the New Black. When Jeong, an infamously bad guesser, realized he was right, the joy from both him and his fellow panelists was, well, out of this world.
EW spoke with Witt about why her unfathomable last year, which included grieving the loss of her parents who were found dead inside their Massachusetts home while she privately underwent treatments for breast cancer, inspired her to create a new song and EP, both titled "Witness." Plus, she opens up about why The Masked Singer was "truly one of the most emotional experiences" of her life.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why did you decide to do The Masked Singer?
ALICIA WITT: I felt there was no question for me, when I got the email and they invited me to be on the show. I was immediately so excited about the opportunity. And I felt like this could be one of the best experiences of my life. Not just because it's fun, and you get to wear an incredible costume and sing a song that you love. But for me, ever since I started making my own music, and being brave enough to put it out into the world, I've had this sense that, for whatever reason, when I sing, I can connect to people in a way that I don't know how to when it comes to words and normal communication. That's what I love about singing and about creating songs. You just don't have that experience in life, as an actor, but also as a human being — we all have this body and persona that we come in. And so people take with that a preconceived notion about who you are and what you're going to say and what your voice is going to communicate. This is an opportunity to communicate without any of that, just distill it down to the pure voice. And I felt so honored, and so eager to have that experience. And it was everything I imagined it would be. Truly one of the most emotional experiences that I can remember having in my whole life. I know that that's a lot to say. But it was the feeling of going out, and in singing to the audience that was there and knowing that they couldn't see me, and I couldn't see them either — it was really special for me.
Michael Becker/FOX Dandelion on 'The Masked Singer'
You have a new song and video, "Witness," out today. What can you tell me about that?
This song is very personal. It's about having come through an unimaginably hard time, and getting out to the other side of it, forever changed, but wanting those who walked side by side with you to know how much you love them for that. And also that you're kind of asking them to remind you what you came through in the future. Because the hope is, of course, that you come out and you move on, but life has a way of… for our own survival, I guess, we tend to forget the worst part sometimes. And that's when you need your witness to let you know what it was you did — that you're strong. And when the idea came to me, I was still in the thick of it all but I wasn't in any place to feel creative. And when I got together with a writer out here named Matt Wynn, who I've been working with, we've written a number of songs together this past year, and we just together turned it into exactly what I had hoped to say. [It's] also a way of connecting hopefully others who have gone through something hard and survived, I did want to get it out and put it out into the world [for them]. Spring is coming and renewal, and I've actually got a whole EP coming. This is the first single on the EP and the whole EP is called Witness, and I'm starting to play some shows along with that. I'll be playing in Nashville, and in New York, I know, in the next next month or so.
Congratulations. That's very exciting.
Thank you. Having been doing this for a while, I feel even more excited to get out and play my shows after having had this experience on [The Masked Singer], because of what I learned about connecting with people through the voice. Even though when I play a show, obviously I'll be looking at people and they'll be looking at me. [Laughs] There's some sort of profound lesson that was learned that I can't quite put my finger on yet. But I'm really so emotional to even think about it. It was deeply meaningful for me. And I think it's forever changed perhaps the way I'll sing for people from now on.
In your clue package, you said you learned that there's always sunshine after the rain. What else do you feel like you learned from everything?
There's a long list. I mean, the fact that my home was hit by a tornado in 2020. That was obviously an incredibly terrifying experience. And my whole neighborhood was deeply affected by it. My neighbors were also out of their homes. And I was just thankful to God that nobody lost their life in my neighborhood, that somehow by miracle upon miracle, everyone was safe. And watching the renewal that's happened in the neighborhood after the tornado is kind of a metaphor for the sunshine after the rain. The fact that I love "Over the Rainbow" and it has as deep a personal connection as it does for me, and always has, and then when we tied together the fact that, oh, my house was actually hit by a tornado, it all made sense that that would be part of the clue package, and also that I would sing that song. I couldn't believe it hadn't been done before. And just when they said that was cleared, and it was mine to sing, I think I cried at that moment. And it's one of my very favorite songs in life and always has been. So to get the opportunity to sing it in such a profound way with just my voice was a gift beyond measure. I would say having come through this, the challenges that might have been public... The experience I just had being on this show and working on the movie that I just finished, which I was filming simultaneously while I was working on The Masked Singer — and that's a whole different story that's profound in a whole different sort of a way. Because without question, that movie was also one of my favorite professional experiences.
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Alicia Witt
You're referring to Longlegs, the upcoming film with Nicolas Cage?
Yeah. So I had these two things that were coming simultaneously. And I actually got the invitation to appear on The Masked Singer the night that I woke up from recovery after my breast reconstruction surgery. Breast reconstruction came kind of at the very, very, very, very end of the whole year, and getting the results that everything was all clear. And that's the final stage of that chapter. But to have received that email as I was waking up out of it, and someone gave me my phone so I could respond to a few texts of friends wanting to make sure I was doing well. And then that came in, and I was in such a haze I wasn't even quite sure till the next morning. I think I was eating my breakfast and I was like, "Did I dream that? Or did I actually have an email from The Masked Singer?" [Laughs] But it just felt like all of that together was the very definition of the sunshine after the rain, and the start of a new chapter with this new music that I'm recording and putting out, starting with this song, that is very specifically about this past year, and the people who walked me through it... it's just a lot of newness. And I'm really grateful to be having this experience and sharing it on such a wide scale.
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