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 prime and subsequently revealed herself to be none aside from Vanessa Hudgens.
“It’s truthfully probably the most unbelievable factor ever,” Hudgens, 35, stated 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 every thing the competitors has given her.
“I by no means knew that this might give me the liberty to purely simply do one thing that I really like and it’s been so lengthy I’ve been ready to try this and I actually do like it a lot,” she stated. “It fills my soul, actually.
Earlier than leaping into her remaining tune — a canopy of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” — Hudgens gave a shoutout to her largest fan. “Mother I really like you, thanks a lot for all the time pushing me and taking me to my dance lessons and singing classes,” she stated. “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 instructed the group 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.
“After 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 stated through the season premiere. “I had massive choices to make. I might play it secure, 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 woman who travels to Florida on spring break along with her buddies, 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. “Courting in Hollywood is tough, and this goldfish wasn’t all the time fortunate,” she stated. “Think about making an attempt to maneuver on once you actually see your exes in all places. And even having your run-ins changed into TikToks.”
As Hudgens followers might recall, the Excessive Faculty 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 largest clue to Goldfish’s id got here on Queen Night time. “I had simply gotten a dream position, however the evening earlier than my debut, I obtained 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 this planet that loved watching me carry out extra.”
This appeared like a transparent reference to the January 2016 loss of life 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 evening 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.”