SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from Wednesday’s episode of The Masked Singer, including the identity of Lovebird.
After a rousing rendition of “All That You Are” by the GooGoo Dolls on Transformers night, Lovebird was the first to be sent home during a double elimination on The Masked Singer.
Even the judges agreed that Lovebird was exuding more confidence this week, but unfortunately that wasn’t enough to keep him off the chopping block. Jenny McCarthy has another win under her belt after correctly guessing that the singer behind the mask was none other than Colton Underwood.
“I had always wanted I knew I wanted to try to show it at some point and when previous offers came in, it just wasn’t the right time in my life,” the former Bachelor told Deadline of competing on the show. “When this season came up, I was like, ‘This is the season I say, yes.’ It’s something that I never thought that I would want to say yes to or be comfortable doing, but it was the experience of a lifetime and something I was so happy and grateful for.”
And since McCarthy seems to have a sixth sense for reality TV stars on The Masked Singer, Underwood wasn’t surprised at all that she was able to guess his identity.
“It was to be expected at that point,” he explained. “I knew she had watched my season. I knew she was familiar with me. She had read my book. So I was like, ‘Oh, she is gonna have this figured out.’”
Audiences who have been following Underwood since his reality TV journey began on The Bachelorette will know that it’s been a rocky path. After vying for Becca Kufrin on Season 8, Underwood quickly went on to Bachelor in Paradise, and then he became The Bachelor for Season 23.
Shortly after his relationship from The Bachelor ended, he faced allegations of stalking that were ultimately dropped. In 2021, Underwood came out as gay, and his coming out journey way documented in the Netflix series Coming Out Colton. He is now married to husband Jordan C. Brown.
Looking back on that time in his life now, Underwood said: “A lot of people forget when these people go on a show like The Bachelor, they’re in their mid-20s. For me, especially, I was coming out of football. I didn’t have a lot of emotional maturity, and I’m all of a sudden navigating a life in front of cameras…obviously I was still working through a lot of shame and figuring my sexuality out.”
He added that while he “was in a position that I should have never been in,” he’s proud of the way things turned out.
“I’m proud of helping contribute to our community and having people feel represented because there’s a lot of people like me that are struggling, that are hiding, that have so much shame around their sexuality, he continued. “I feel like I had to go through what I went through to speak for people within our community that felt similarly to what I was feeling.”
Obviously, Underwood’s Lovebird costume was a nod to his dating show days, but he also thinks it represents the “self acceptance that I’ve experienced in the last few years.”
“Lovebird spoke to me beautifully,” he said.