This year's winner of "Masked Singer" opened the final with Madonna's "Like a Prayer" and shocked everyone - especially the jury - with a new voice. A male one.
"This is absolutely crazy. We've thought this was a girl all week. All my guesses, and everyone else's, were that it was a woman," says jury member Behrouz "Berra" Badreh after the performance.
After both the Lawnmower and the Sheriff - who were revealed to be soccer player Caroline Seger and artist Emil Henrohn - were eliminated, it was time for the jury to guess who was hiding behind the Punk Parrot. Only jury member Pernilla Wahlgren guessed correctly: Under the parrot's head appeared the artist John Lundvik.
Wanted to be unrecognizable
Lundvik describes the feeling after winning as "incredible" and the participation as a challenge from day one.
"I'm an artist who is known for my singing and voice. That makes it very challenging when you have to be on a program where it's about being unrecognizable," he tells TT.
Before John Lundvik accepted, he thought for a long time about how he would manage to participate without being recognized by the jury and viewers.
"I can't do anything half-hearted with my DNA. So I came up with the crazy idea of trying to do the program as a woman."
“It was the dream”
He practiced a lot to get the right sound, pronunciation and movement pattern – which was not easy wearing an "extremely" heavy and hot parrot suit.
Had you planned to sing with your own voice if you made it to the finals?
"Yes, that was the dream and the plan from the start. That I had to dare to be in my female voice as far as possible and not fool around with it. Once I was in the final, it felt like I could now shift up. From driving in third gear to shifting up to sixth gear and driving full throttle," says Lundvik.
The Giant Baby (Isa Östling)
The Desert Rat (Thomas Bodström)
The Mummy (Martin "E-Type" Eriksson)
The Haystack (Tina Nordström)
Pom Pom Pomeranian (Agneta Sjödin)
The Crunchy Ball (Anna Book)
The Fryer (Stefan Holm)
The Eggs (Alexander Pärleros and Ida Warg)
The Karate Cat (Kim Sulocki)
The Lawnmower (Caroline Seger)
The Sheriff (Emil Henrohn)
The Punk Parrot (John Lundvik)
What do you think?