‘Masked Dancer’: Hammerhead Is Proud of ‘Misdirection’ That Made Judges Guess His Co-Stars

(Warning: This post contains spoilers for Wednesday’s “The Masked Dancer.”)

“The Masked Dancer” judges are probably kicking themselves after Wednesday’s episode, when they incorrectly guessed that the Hammerhead contestant could be Pauly D or Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino from “Jersey Shore.” They were close — Hammerhead turned out to be Vinny Guadagnino, whose name had been mentioned in passing earlier in the episode, but not formally guessed.

But Guadagnino is more than OK with the judges’ blunder, because it proves his “misdirection” on the Fox dancing competition was working.

“It is a clue game — they want to give you clues so that you can kind of guess who it is eventually, right? So a lot of my clues probably led to that ‘Jersey Shore’ type of vibe and type of character,” he told TheWrap. “But I love that they didn’t know that it was me. I love that they were going for other characters on the show because that’s kind of been the story of my life. On ‘Jersey Shore,’ I’m more of the low-key kind of guy and you’ve always had the bigger characters like Pauly D and Mike and everything. So I was like the quiet little sleeper cell just lurking in the background doing my thing. And I can perform, I can be big, I just don’t really put it out there like that. So I like that misdirection that I had.”

Guadagnino said none of his “Jersey Shore” co-stars know about his time on “The Masked Dancer,” but he can’t wait for them to find out because of how much the show has come up in their group chat.

“They keep sending in the group chat, ‘Oh, look, they think it’s me.’ Because they keep talking about Mike ‘The Situation’ or whatever,” the reality star said. “So they’ll send it in the group chat and I just stay quiet, like I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

He added: “I’m not sure if they watch the show, but I bet you now everybody will go back and watch the show and be like, ‘What is this? What is going on here?’ Because it’s such a big moment to reveal and they’re going to start analyzing my moves. I think they’ll be impressed. Look, they know me more than a lot of people do, we’re like best friends and a family, so they know that this is right in my wheelhouse. They’ll get a kick out of this.”

“The Masked Dancer” airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on Fox.