When The Masked Singer eliminated Three-Headed Hydra last week, it caused a big problem for the production.
Penn & Teller were inside the costume, and the stagehands couldn’t get them out of it. As a result, they had to destroy the Hydra costume to reveal the Las Vegas magicians.
Penn explained all of this after the unmasking and reveal and said it was a 20-minute ordeal of getting the costume off of them, while the show only made it look like seconds.
Penn then broke down what it was like to be inside the costume.
Penn explains working inside Masked Singer Hydra costume
Penn Jillette spoke to Entertainment Weekly about performing in the costume.
He then took fans on a little trip behind the curtain at how the costume worked, which was surprising for magicians who keep their secrets hidden from everyone.
“We were mostly standing in there,” Penn said. “Although ‘standing’ is not the way you usually picture that word. We were kind of contorted and bent about in there. And trying desperately not to fall over.
“I mean, we had to sing. We had to do our job. We also had to not fall over. And so what’s going through our heads during that is, “Oh, this is a really nice song by Train, let’s not fall over. Here’s the next line coming up. Let’s not fall over. Oh boy. Now it’s Teller’s turn to sing, let’s not fall over.”
The good news was that they just had to stand there and move around, but they didn’t have to control the smoke effects coming out of their mouths.
“No, that was above us. That was radio-controlled, I believe,” Penn said. “We did do a small amount of puppeteering from inside, but not much.”
The restrictions of the Hydra costume on The Masked Singer
It was also a unique costume for The Masked Singer. Usually, a contestant gets their costume on in their dressing room, but Three-Headed Hydra was so big it had to be put on the duo by the stage.
This meant that they needed a large barrier to keep them hidden.
As for the three heads, Penn said it was perfect because no one would be thinking of a duo, which made it harder to figure out who they were under the mask.
They also had to cut the heads off the Hydra costume to get them out.
“I mean, they had to tear the costume apart. I’d guess it took about 25 or 30 minutes to get us out of a costume,” Penn said. “It was not easy getting us out of there. It was not easy. By the time we came out, we didn’t know where we were, and we ourselves did not know who we were.”
The Masked Singer airs on Wednesday nights at 8/7c on Fox.