‘The Masked Singer’ Eliminates Cupcake and Reveals This Sweet Artist

Last night’s episode of “The Masked Singer” gave audiences another glimpse into the Group B batch of contestants: the Cupcake, the Queen of Hearts, the Mallard, the Banana Split duo, and a new wildcard called the Caterpillar.

However, it was the Cupcake who failed to impress audiences after singing “Heat Wave” by Martha Reeves & The Vandellas, and was subsequently put up for elimination.

Robin Thicke said that he thought “Saturday Night Live” actress Leslie Jones was underneath the mask. Jenny McCarthy-Wahlberg guessed Jamaican-American model and singer Grace Jones. Ken Jeong offered up a guess of Tina Turner, and Nicole Scherzinger believed that it was Ruth from “The Pointer Sisters.”

In the end, the audience was stunned when host Nick Cannon unmasked Cupcake to prove Nicole’s guess correct: Ruth Pointer.

Ruth Pointer is the oldest member of the American family singing group known as “The Pointer Sisters." With popular hits such as “Jump” and “I’m So Excited,” the R&B group contained Ruth, 75, her sister, Anita, 73, and four other sisters: Issa, Sadako, Bonnie, and June.

During one of the clue packages, the Cupcake revealed that she was doing the show because someone close to her got bad news about their health.

As Ruth later told the judges after her unmasking, “There were supposed to be two Cupcakes and Anita’s having some health issues that we couldn’t avoid, so I ended up doing it by myself.”

She turned to face the cameras and added, “Sweetheart, I love you! I came to do what I needed to get home and support you.”

Although she first suggested a tree, the costume department offered her a glimpse at the Cupcake costume, and Ruth fell in love. However, she describes moving in the costume as “very strategic and awkward.”

Explaining that the costume consisted of two pieces, she revealed that “the bottom piece is sort of like an oversized pair of coveralls that have suspenders you get into, and then the top part clips together with the bottom part and you poke your arms through the holes and there’s a slit up in the icing that you can hopefully see through.”

She continued, “That was a little difficult to see through because it’s like a painted mesh, but it’s an adventure up in there because you’re wired with a microphone and earplugs and all of that at the same time with a bodysuit and ooh, that’s a lot.”

Although most contestants are surprised when they get asked to perform on the show, Ruth was a big fan and actually “asked my manager to get me on it.”

In a post-unmasking interview, she admitted that she also wasn’t surprised that Scherzinger, lead singer of “The Pussycat Dolls,” recognized her voice. Ruth explained that “we had an encounter of a flight a few years back, and I think just the next-gen of girl group, her being from a girl group, I just felt like she probably knows about different voices and different girl groups.”

The biggest takeaway that she has from performing on “TMS” stage is “the courage that it takes to do something like that. It just gives me another level of adventure in my life that I didn’t say no to that I might’ve been a little afraid of, but did it anyway.”

In last week’s episode, the Baby was from Group A was unmasked.

“The Masked Singer” airs Wednesday nights on Fox.