Season 11 of The Masked Singer ended with a bang — and a star reveal for the ages.
After a heated battle between Goldfish and Gumball, Goldfish got here out on high and subsequently revealed herself to be none aside from Vanessa Hudgens.
“It’s truthfully probably the most unimaginable factor ever,” Hudgens, 35, mentioned of her expertise on the present. “I’ve simply been so excited to take my masks off and stare at [judge] Rita Ora and say, ‘For this reason I can’t hang around with you. As a result of I can’t lie!’”
Hudgens held again tears as she mirrored on all the pieces the competitors has given her.
“I by no means knew that this may give me the liberty to purely simply do one thing that I really like and it’s been so lengthy I’ve been in a position to do this and I actually do like it a lot,” she mentioned. “It fills my soul, really.
Earlier than leaping into her remaining tune — a canopy of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” — Hudgens gave a shoutout to her greatest fan. “Mother I really like you, thanks a lot for at all times pushing me and taking me to my dance lessons and singing classes,” she mentioned. “I lastly gained for my singing,”
Hudgens prevailed over Gumball, who was unmasked as Friday Night time Lights alum Scott Porter. The duo beforehand starred collectively within the film Bandslam, the place Hudgens beats out Porter, 44, in a music competitors. “It’s historical past repeating itself!” he informed the gang whereas laughing.
Hudgens has been a frequent guess on the present since its premiere in 2019. Whereas she stored the panelists stumped for a lot of season 11, her followers have suspected all alongside that the previous Disney star was behind the masks.
“Once I first began out, I made a splash in a single day. However all that success made me really feel like I used to be residing in a fishbowl, with everybody’s eyes and expectations on me,” Goldfish mentioned throughout the season premiere. “I had massive choices to make. I might play it protected, or dive into deeper, darker, edgier waters.”
Students of Hudgens’ profession interpreted the “edgier waters” to be a reference to the 2012 movie Spring Breakers, by which she starred as a hard-partying faculty lady who travels to Florida on spring break together with her mates, performed by Ashley Benson, Selena Gomez and Rachel Korine.
Throughout Transformers Night time, Goldfish hinted that her love life had been mentioned within the public eye. “Relationship in Hollywood is difficult, and this goldfish wasn’t at all times fortunate,” she mentioned. “Think about attempting to maneuver on while you actually see your exes in every single place. And even having your run-ins become TikToks.”
As Hudgens followers might recall, the Excessive College Musical star famously bumped into ex-boyfriend Austin Butler at an Oscars afterparty in 2023. In a viral clip of the second, Hudgens walked by Butler, 32, with out making eye contact as onlookers screamed his identify.
The most important clue to Goldfish’s identification got here on Queen Night time. “I had simply gotten a dream position, however the night time earlier than my debut, I acquired the worst information I might have ever imagined. I misplaced my No. 1 supporter,” she recalled. “Nothing might have ready me for that. I felt like I couldn’t transfer. However then I remembered, there was nobody on the planet that loved watching me carry out extra.”
This appeared like a transparent reference to the January 2016 dying of Hudgens’ father, Greg. He died of most cancers the day earlier than she was set to star as Rizzo in Fox’s Grease: Stay. Hudgens introduced the information hours earlier than the present, dedicating her efficiency to his reminiscence.
“I’m so unhappy to say that final night time my daddy, Greg handed away from stage 4 most cancers,” she tweeted on the time. “Thanks to everybody who stored him in your prayers. Tonight, I do the present in his honor.”