Judge Greg Mathis joked that he’s no longer “Black famous” following his appearance on The Masked Singer.
The veteran television judge was unmasked on Wednesday during the Star Trek-themed night of the show.
“I feel like I’m famous now,” Mathis said with a chuckle during a recent interview with Blavity’s Shadow and Act. “I tell people I’m white folks famous now, OK?”
An opportunity to reconnect with his musical roots
As a Detroit native, Mathis recalled growing up with the sound of music all around him, especially thanks to the legendary Motown record label, which was responsible for the rise of legacy artists including The Temptations, The Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell, Diana Ross and The Supremes, and a host of others.
“I thought about when I stood out on that grass,” he said. “Me and my friends, like others, were on the grass in front of Motown in Detroit as adolescents, singing and hoping that one of those times Smokey Robinson would walk by, or the producers would walk by, hoping that they would look and call us in.”
“That’s what I thought about, and then at the end, I even made reference to Smokey and Berry Gordy, who are now my friends,” he continued. “But that was a great experience to fulfill some of those Motown dreams I had, being from Detroit, and standing in front of there, trying to get discovered. I want to tell Smokey and Berry, like I did last night, that they should have signed me.”
One of his clues for his final appearance on The Masked Singer was New Edition member Johnny Gill, another good friend of Mathis, who revealed that singing wasn’t the day job of Mathis’ character, 14 Karat Carrot.
Was that his initial costume?
Although Mathis’s costume for his debut on The Masked Singer was a shiny gold hip-hop-inspired carrot, he said that the team first approached him with one that he wasn’t too keen on.
“It was, I believe, a dinosaur of some type, and I told them, ‘I know I’m old now. I’ve been on television for 25 years, but I don’t quite think I’m a dinosaur,” he laughed. “When they brought me that hip-hop, I said, ‘That’s me!’”
What this moment means to his television legacy
Mathis had the judges confused and all wrong, except for Robin Thicke, who made a last-minute decision to switch his vote to the iconic television judge.
For Mathis, this was a fun opportunity for people to see his personality from behind the bench. He also said he will have a lot more empathy for those standing before him moving forward, because standing before the judges was a bit more nerve-wracking than he expected.
“I think we should all kind of know a little more about the folks we praise, watch, and look up to,” Mathis said. “I want to know something more about you. You’re in my household every day. You’re like a family member, so tell me something about yourself, other than what I hear on television. That was good to step out of the box and show folks who know me and support me that I’m multidimensional. And that was the part I enjoyed.”