The Masked Singer: Jackie ‘O’ Henderson reveals ‘over the top’ precautions amid Melbourne lockdown

Channel 10 is going to extreme lengths to ensure The Masked Singer continues filming amid Victoria’s stage four lockdown restrictions.  

And Jackie ‘O’ Henderson, 45, has given fans an insight into the strict COVID-19 precautions she and fellow judges David Hughes, Dannii Minogue and Urzila Carlson have had to follow on-set.   

‘The COVID restrictions are so over the top that we have to follow. There’s a lot of stuff that’s different now. There’s a lot of sanitising going on,’ she told KIIS FM’s Kyle Sandilands on Monday.     

Jackie said her filming schedule has been changed to end in the middle of the night, presumably to reduce the risk of cast and crew making contact with people on their way home from work.  

‘When I finished Masked Singer last year, we’d probably finished at around 10pm. [This year,] we’re going until two in the morning,’ she explained. 

The show is no-longer filmed in front of a live studio audience, but rather a panel of online spectators. 

‘We have a Zoom audience at home of super-fans, so we have to wait for them to vote,’ she said. 

Of the stage set-up, Jackie explained that she and her fellow judges are positioned far away from each other, and separated with perspex screens. 

‘People can’t be near each other, we’ve got partitions in between us. There’s a lot of stuff going on. We can’t even stand next to one another,’ she revealed.  

‘In terms of us following protocol, you just couldn’t get any stricter,’ Jackie declared.

On Sunday, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced a state of disaster and tough new measures on Sunday as Victoria recorded another 671 new coronavirus cases and seven more deaths.

For the next six weeks, Melburnians are banned from leaving their homes between 8pm and 5am unless for work or care-related reasons.