Contestants on The Masked Singer prep for the show in a number of ways, but few of them get help from their own in-house vocal coach. Paparazzo, however, was lucky enough to have a Grammy-winning singer in his corner.
Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Masked Singer season 13, episode 10.
During the Wednesday, April 16, episode of the Fox singing competition, Paparazzo was unmasked as Matthew Lawrence, who ended his time on the series by singing a song by his girlfriend Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas’ band, TLC.
Lawrence, 45, exclusively told Us Weekly that he was super intimidated to sing “Unpretty” given his personal connection to the tune.
“Are you kidding me?! I don’t wanna butcher her song,” the Boy Meets World alum quipped. “Not to mention I had to ask [Chilli’s] bandmate [Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins], ’cause she wrote it. I had to get clearance from her. I was like, ‘Oh, this is embarrassing.’”
As for how “Unpretty” even became an option for him to sing, Lawrence has only himself to blame. When he signed on for The Masked Singer, he had to fill out a form listing some of his favorite songs, and he chose the TLC track as one of his “guilty pleasure” tracks. He didn’t think producers would actually give him “Unpretty,” but he notes he’s loved the song since it debuted in 1999.
“That darn thing was stuck in my head [when it came out],” he recalled. “Every time I was in the shower or in the car, I was singing it. So I wrote it down, not thinking that it would ever get chosen, but it did. They chose it! I was like, ‘OK, uh, this is gonna be interesting.’”
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Chilli, 54, was apparently a good sport about the situation, even giving her boyfriend of two years some tips on how to belt it out.
“She’s such a pro,” Lawrence gushed. “The main tip was that you gotta pace yourself because you can lose your breath — really, really pace yourself when you’re singing, especially if you’re moving around and doing things and you’re worried about all this stuff. … [Your voice] is a muscle, and I’m not exercising that muscle, so pace yourself. She gave me a couple of good little licks to do. She was great, man.”
And was Chilli satisfied with her partner’s performance?
“Yes. Whether it’s real or not, she made it seem like she was very impressed,” Lawrence said. “She was so sweet, so supportive. She really loved the ‘Hallelujah’ one. That was her favorite.” (The Brotherly Love veteran sang Leonard Cohen’s iconic song during Shrek Night in February.)
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While Lawrence made it pretty far on The Masked Singer given his lack of pro singing experience, he said he had to be convinced to do the show because of a past trauma involving a failed Broadway audition.
“I have a real fear of singing,” the actor revealed. “I bombed a really big Broadway audition in front of a lot of famous faces. It was awful, really bad. It was for Cry-Baby to play the Johnny Depp character in the show, and they were doing an adaptation for Broadway. I don’t know if it ever got made or whatever happened to it, ’cause I blacked it out of my memory. … And since then, I never really got back on stage.”
Lawrence isn’t sure he’s ready to embark on a new career as a pop star, but his time on the show — especially his triumph on Shrek Night — has helped him shed some of that phobia around singing.
“This is the season in my life where I’m gonna start to say yes to things and not say no so much and cast out fear and not live in that space anymore,” he explained. “That was the goal of this. And it worked!”
The Masked Singer airs on Fox Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET. New episodes stream the next day on Hulu.
