Lou Diamond Phillips was behind the Mantis all along! The actor was revealed during the April 26 episode of The Masked Singer, along with Keenan Allen as the Gargoyle. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Lou about doing the show for his daughter.
“I am a busy guy, and it’s interesting. They asked me before and because of the schedule that was never really realistic. But I had a window this time,” he said. “To be quite honest, my daughter Indigo, might be the biggest fan of the show ever. She really loves the show. So when the opportunity came up, I basically had to ask her permission because there’s dad’s world and all this stuff that dad does, and then there’s Indigo’s world. And I was like, ‘Well, can I come play in your world for a little bit?’ And once she wrapped her head around it, she was very, very excited.”
The Prodigal Son alum loved that the Mantis costume had a “real presence” on stage. “I really thought it was impressive and cool and felt like something that I can own the stage with because that’s all you got,” Lou continued. “As performers, you’re used to engaging with the audience and having your facial expressions and doing that kind of thing. With this, you’re totally depending on the stage presence of the costume you’re wearing.”
The Mantis costume was a bit challenging to perform in, though. “First of all, you’re soaked by the end of it. Literally,” he admitted. “They put you in a dry suit underneath. I was like, really? Do we need this layer? You could have wrung out a gallon of sweat after the performance.”
Lou revealed that he decided to do The Masked Singer to tackle a new challenge. “As with a lot of the roles that I do, I’m always trying to challenge myself. I’m always trying to do something different. This totally fit into it,” Lou told HollywoodLife. “Once you sort of grasp the concept and own it and make it organic, it becomes this sort of different platform where you try to figure out how to best achieve a good performance. It felt like a live performance. It felt like a stage show. The level of production is really impressive. It’s a lot of fun and you can feel and hear the audience, so in that respect, it’s no different than being on stage or music or something. But the costume changes everything.”
