The New Kids on the Block band member played off speculation he is secretly on the Fox competition series.
Is Donnie Wahlberg secretly The Rabbit on The Masked Singer?
The New Kids on the Block band member became such a popular choice among fans of Fox's wildly popular celebrity singing competition that even his wife, Masked Singer panelist Jenny McCarthy, joked in a recent episode it could potentially be him because he never answers the phone during the show.
"I can't answer that," he quipped, when asked Monday at the Television Critics Association press tour while promoting HLN's Very Scary People, whether there was any truth to the speculation.
"I can only say that there is a list of boy banders who are alleged to be The Rabbit and I'm on the list," Wahlberg noted. "I think I'm trending third now behind Joey Fatone and Joey McIntyre. I don't even know who's in costume and if it's me, I haven't found out yet."
Wahlberg could very well be pulling everyone's leg with his nonchalant brush-off of Masked Singer rumors, but the likelihood that he's the celebrity behind The Rabbit is slim, as he is an inch shorter -- 5'10" -- than the person cloaked in costume, who is officially listed at 5'11".
For the record, we believe the former boy bander behind The Rabbit is Fatone, formerly of 'NSync. So far this season, the unmasked stars have included Antonio Brown, Ricki Lake, Terry Bradshaw, Tori Spelling and Tommy Chong.
Recently, The Masked Singer team addressed how they will maintain the same level of secrecy for the upcoming second season, now that the series has become a sensation.
"We have a lot of production processes in place for that type of secrecy that can still remain in place, if that makes sense. So few people knew who any of the singers were on our production -- and it was very, very, very few people," executive producer Izzie Pick Ibarra said last week. "We can carry on that to another season and I feel confident that we can keep [that going]."
"That’s the big part of the show right now: keeping the secret," executive producer Craig Plestis said. "We want America to guess. We want our panel to guess. We really tried to keep every secret from them because that’s a magic that we got from the show. If we can keep that again, keep all this a secret from everybody, from the crew and from the rest of America, it’s going to be a great season."
The Masked Singer airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.
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