Ken Jeong: The doctor is in—and the medicine he prescribes is laughter

First of two parts

Comedians are a curious breed, particularly when they aren’t playing to the peanut gallery or poking fun at themselves in front of a camera. In our experience at interviews with funnymen behind the Klieg lights, comedians are often polar opposites of the wacky persona they project onscreen—so they’re either the most thoughtful or the circumspect sort when they aren’t wearing their game faces on.

In Ken Jeong’s case, the stand-up comic rose to fame by either talking about his small penis (“the smaller the penis, the bigger the box office”) or breathing life into the looniest characters in blockbuster movies like “The Hangover,” “Knocked Up” and “Crazy Rich Asians,” as well as in TV programs like “Community.”

In the aforesaid sitcom, Ken plays—hold your breath—a ridiculously unqualified Spanish teacher with anger management issues who later reinvents himself as a math professor, an actor in a Steven Spielberg movie, and a closeted homosexual who calls himself “legit gay.” Whew.

For this interview, we agreed to stay up for the 2 a.m. video call because we wanted the 51-year-old actor-physician to know how much we enjoyed “You Complete Me, Ho,” Ken’s hourlong stand-up comedy show on Netflix that thematically utilizes a family crisis (his doctor wife was diagnosed with cancer just as he was about to shoot “The Hangover”) to contextualize his self-deprecating humor.

Ken is one of the four panelists in the latest season of Blue Ant Entertainment’s “The Masked Singer,” along with Nicole Scherzinger, Jenny McCarthy Wahlberg and Robin Thicke, with the controversial Nick Cannon as host.

The show’s previous winners include T-Pain dressed as his alter ego Monster (edging out Donny Osmond and Gladys Knight for the crown), Wayne Brady as Fox (beating Chris Daughtry and Adrienne Bailon) and Kandi Burruss as Night Angel (against Jesse McCartney and Bow Wow).

For the uninitiated, here’s how the competition works: It features 16 celebrities clad in face masks and custom-built, elaborately designed costumes worn from head to toe that conceal their real identities.

At the end of each episode, each panelist is asked to make a wild guess who the stars behind the masks could be, based on given clues. Thereafter, they cast their vote for the favorite performer of the night, while the least popular is unmasked and eliminated before he or she is, uh, “put out to pasture.”

Season 4 began its run last Sept. 24 at 9:45 p.m. on Blue Ant (channels 53/196 on SkyCable; channel 120 on Cignal). And, based on what we’ve seen so far, it looks like Ken and his pals have their work cut out for them “separating the grain from the chaff.”

The reality singing tilt, a franchise of the South Korean TV show “King of Mask Singer,” has become so popular that it has spawned about 35 iterations around the world—including one from the Philippines (“Masked Singer Pilipinas”), which begins airing on Oct. 24 on TV5, with Aga Muhlach, Cristine Reyes, Kim Molina and Matteo Guidicelli on the panel and Billy Crawford as host. For his part, Ken said it wasn’t hard to get drawn to “The Masked Singer” because it’s his mother’s favorite show.

“I’m of Korean descent, and my mom, although she lives in the States, is a big fan of ‘King of Mask Singer,’” he explained. “She watches a lot of Korean TV shows. So, when I was approached to being a panelist a few years ago, I ran it by my mom, who then sent me links to her favorite moments in the Korean version. That pretty much convinced me to do this.

“I also host ‘I Can See Your Voice,’ another adaptation of a South Korean game show—and it was also my mother who kind of walked me through it. I guess my whole point in talking about this is, ‘Just listen to your mom—and everything will be alright (laughs).’”

Despite its “bizarre sensibility,” however, Ken isn’t surprised at all why the show has become so successful.

“It’s all about timing. We’re at the right place, at the right time,” he mused. “It has become this worldwide phenomenon, and it’s still going strong because it’s original and new and fresh—there’s just a little of everything in it. It just proves that the appetite for musical shows has evolved to this point. It’s basically the best family show there is to watch.”

Ken, who describes himself as the “dumbest judge on the show,” said that part of the lure is in its unpredictability that, even after four seasons, it’s still hard to dispense valuable tips to help viewers guess the contestants’ identities better and more accurately.

“Watching the show is almost like taking a trip to the casino and playing blackjack—the dealer or the house always wins (laughs). So, to me, what’s important is how you can stay competitive with the house, and it’s the clues that are really important in terms of achieving more accuracy in the guesswork.

“Sometimes, the performances can distract you from the clues, as they do for me, because I’m not a professional musician. So, just when I go down one alleyway with the clues, a performance just shatters all of that and changes my mind. There’s no algorithm, really.

“Now that we’re in Season 4, I noticed that they made the game harder and the clues even more challenging. I think that’s what [executive producer] Craig Plestis was so smart to have done in the show. He’s always looking for ways to top the previous season—and I find that admirable because it’s very easy for ‘The Masked Singer,’ it being the No. 1 hit in America, to just coast along. He wants its format to continually evolve, and the best way to do that is to consistently be challenged by it.”

Our Q&A with Ken:

You said that you’re not a musician, but, you’ll also be singing in Netflix’s upcoming animated film, “Over the Moon.” Can you imagine yourself being on the other side of “The Masked Singer” stage—as a performer?

Yeah, I actually did—just as an exhibition. In 2019, during Lunar New Year, I participated in the Korean “Mask Singer” show, just before the premiere of the US version. It was the Year of the Golden Pig, so I dressed up appropriately—as a golden pig, naturally—and sang Radiohead’s “Creep.”

I really wanted to get a feel for what it was like to be a contestant, and that’s how I developed respect for the game. It was wonderful to be in a costume, singing your heart out, and doing it with no self-awareness.

People know me as a comedian, so there’s a certain way people look at me. It was nice to be sincere and sing it without any bias—it was very liberating. So, I know that the contestants who participate in our show get that same sense of liberation.

In academic terms, I look at “The Masked Singer” as the best music-appreciation class ever. I get to see the best private concerts in the world and rub elbows with the brightest minds in music, like Robin Thicke and Nicole Scherzinger.

Any dream performers you wish to see in the show?

That’s a great question. I just want to see everyone who gets to perform on that stage, regardless of whether he or she is, quote unquote, huge or not. I want everyone to have fun, because that’s key to the show’s success. I don’t exactly know how it became a hit, except for one ingredient: It’s fun.

If every single contestant ends up having fun in that show, then everything works. Some of them were friends of mine that I obviously got wrong, [because] I am the dumbest judge on the show (laughs). I genuinely do not play the game well, and I’m not good at board games. So, it’s funny when people say, “Oh, you were a doctor, and you’re so talented at what you do.”

It’s amazing that I’m becoming famous for something I’m not good at. Being on that panel is the “funnest” job I’ve ever had. I love being the fly on the wall, just observing greatness! I love every second of it.

After your forays into films, TV and stand-up comedy, is there anything else you wish to pursue?

I feel fortunate to have done everything I’ve ever wanted in my career—and then some. My goal really is to choose projects that I think are going to be fun for the rest of my life. I don’t have a specific plan.

But as I get older and more advanced in my career, I just want it to be dictated by fun, see if the job is appropriate for me, and how that works for my lifestyle—because I’m now a father of two. I do things according to my family schedule, which always comes into play.

So, I consult my wife on every potential job that I get. I’m no different from anybody else. I take it day by day, and that’s been the best way to go about it: You can just do this for enjoyment and fulfillment.

(To be concluded tomorrow)

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TAGS: Ken Jeong, The Masked Singer