The fame game
As Abbie Chatfield returns to prime-time TV as a panellist on The Masked Singer Australia, the popular social media star gives Lauren Mitchell the lowdown on the series
ABBIE Chatfield has the Midas touch. It seems everything the 27-year-old former Bachelor contestant turns her hand to becomes a roaring success, and the new season of The Masked Singer Australia is no exception.
Chatfield’s popularity, particularly among young women, has seen her appear not only on Bachelor in Paradise, but crowned the winner of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here in 2021 – toppling the likes of Grant Denyer, Toni Pearen and Colin Fassnidge for the title. Her nightly national radio show Hot Nights with Abbie Chatfield, which airs locally on Fox FM, and hit podcast It’s A Lot draw legions of fans who hang on every word she says. Chatfield’s even started her own clothing line, Verbose, hosts Nine’s Love Island Afterparty and filmed a TV pilot, Abbie Chats, for 10 Play’s recent Pilot Showcase.
To say Chatfield is a very busy woman would be an understatement, but she jumped at the chance to appear on the latest series of 10’s hidden-identity singing competition.
“I was really happy when I got the call to join the panel for The Masked Singer, obviously,” she explains.
“My manager was very dramatic and he said, ‘Do you want to go on The Masked Singer?’ and then gave a big pause and said ‘As a panellist?!’ So the drama was very fun. I was super-stoked.”
Pop star Mel B, aka Scary Spice, and radio star
Chrissie Swan also join the show for its fourth season, working with comedian
Dave Hughes to deduce just which celebrities are under the showstopping creations by
Oscar-winning costume designer Tim Chappel. The show also reunites Chatfield with The Bachelor host Osher Günsberg.
The refreshed panel has no shortage of star connections, mostly thanks to Mel B, who has appeared behind the mask on two international versions of the series and comes armed with a literal catalogue of celebrity encounters. She and Chatfield had an instant bond, walking the
Logies red carpet together on the night they met.
“It was great working with a Spice Girl!” Chatfield enthuses.
“She’s so fantastic and normal that you often forget how big of a deal it is to be next to her. She’s so beyond lovely. It’s out of control,
I love her.”
Chatfield takes her role on the fun-filled family show seriously, honing her detective skills each episode, alongside her fellow panellists.
“The ladies were taking it very seriously,” she says.
“Hughesy was trying, too. At one point he was booed which wasn’t fair, as the guess he was booed for was quite reasonable considering some of the other guesses we’ve had from Dave Hughes.
“Chrissie Swan is the ultimate guesser. I really need to take a leaf out of her book.
“My detective skills are pretty good. If Chrissie Swan is a 10 and Hughesy is a 0… then I reckon I am a 7.”
Filming on The Masked Singer wrapped last month, so how is the famously candid Chatfield keeping quiet on the secret identities of the celebrity guests?
“It’s hard to not slip up,” she confesses.
“In terms of people asking me ‘Who is under the mask?’, I say to them ‘You don’t want to know’.
“Because the people who are asking me are diehard fans and it ruins the whole show
for them. So, I don’t tell them, and they usually accept that.”
The Masked Singer Australia, Sunday-Tuesday, 7.30pm, 10