Before The Masked Singer took over our TV screens, country crooner Orville Peck was a real-life masked singer. Since his debut in 2017, Orville has become known for his smokey lower-register vocals...and for making public appearances with a mask on. The mystery of Orville’s facial features has made him a pop culture fixture, and we’ve seen celebs like Sia play a similar game with her larger-than-life wigs.
But now, Orville is heading to Broadway and trading his cowboy hat for clown makeup as the emcee in Cabaret’s current revival. Since he announced his musical move in January, fans couldn’t help but wonder whether he’ll perform with his signature mask on. In a recent interview with the New York Times, the “Dead of Night” hitmaker shared that he’ll be ditching his mask nearly 10 years after he dropped his first song.
“The mask is part of my expression personally as an artist and a very big personal part of me,” he told the outlet. “But I’m here to play this role and to bring respect and integrity and hopefully a good performance to it. It’s not about me. I’m not trying to make it the Orville Peck show.”
He added, “The irony is that if I put my mask on, I’m suddenly not anonymous anymore,” he said. “The weird part is for me to be anonymous. I just take my mask off and walk around like normal and then no one knows who I am.”
While some masks he’s worn over the years have shown the bottom half of his face, most of them include long fringe to conceal his identity. Fans have been eager for Orville’s full face reveal since his debut album Pony was released in 2019.
As for his role in Cabaret, Orville follows an impressive lineage of actors who have played the part. The Traitors host Alan Cumming won a Tony award for his portrayal of the emcee in 1998, and stars like Eddie Redmayne and Adam Lambert have since taken on the role in the show’s recent revival. Orville is set to make his Broadway debut in Cabaret on March 31.
