(Warning: This post contains spoilers from Wednesday’s “The Masked Singer.”)
The T-Rex made “Masked Singer” history on Wednesday night, when she was eliminated and revealed to be 16-year-old Jojo Siwa — the very first kid to ever compete on Fox’s smash-hit celebrity singing competition.
And the honor of being “The Masked Singer’s” first-ever, under-18 competitor is not lost on the young singer, dancer and YouTube Star.
“I am the youngest and I’m also the only kid, which is really cool,” the “Dance Moms” alum told TheWrap. “It was great because I move around so much and I use so much energy in my performances. But also, for me, it was really, really, really difficult. And I’m sure it’s hard for anybody, but for me specifically, using so much energy in my performances it was double hard.”
Now, that’s what made doing the show a hard for Jojo — but what about what made it hard for Fox, given that there are specific Child Labor Laws that must be followed when a minor is on set?
“Because I’ve graduated, therefore I’m done with school, so if I wasn’t done with school, I would have had to do only 3 hours a day on set, but I’ve graduated, so I didn’t have to worry about that, which was also great for production,” Siwa said. “So the only thing is, I could only work 10.5 hours a day. But I really shot for, like, 9 hours, so they honestly had an hour and a half left over.”
“But on the day I got eliminated, because I had to stay later and do post-show interviews, film the elimination, that day was a little bit closer because we had to make sure I didn’t get over my hours so they didn’t get in trouble,” she added. “I wouldn’t have cared because I was having so much fun! But they couldn’t get in trouble.”
Siwa says if she had been just a year younger “it would have been difficult.”
“Because then you still have to have the child labor [advocate] on set, the school teacher on set, you have to have all these different things,” she told us. “But once you’re 16, all those things go away and you don’t need a child advocate on set anymore. So it worked out pretty simple for them.”
Siwa told us that she became “really close” with “The Masked Singer” crew while competing on the show and that she and the producer she was closest to even shared a good cry when she was eliminated. But that doesn’t mean being kicked off was a bad thing. Actually, Siwa says it’s really a win, in a way.
“It’s not a competition show that — this is one of the first things I was told — it’s not a competition show where it’s a bad thing to be eliminated,” she said. “It’s positive and it’s happy. If you’re going home, it’s not an ‘Oh my God, goodbye!’ it’s a ‘We’re excited! We get to find out who you are!’ When you get eliminated, it’s like you get to finally show the world who you are.”
“The Masked Singer” airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on Fox.