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Dami Im talks MasterChef and why she’ll never do The Masked Singer
Dami Im is no stranger to a reality TV competition, capturing viewers’ hearts across the country when she won The X Factor in 2013, before taking the world by storm three years later finishing second place in Eurovision.
The Paper Dragon hitmaker, who is set to release her new album My Reality later this month, recently made her return to the small screen as one of the ten famous faces competing on Celebrity MasterChef.
Chatting with Yahoo Lifestyle about the cooking competition series, Dami describes the experience as “so much fun”.
“I went into it because all my shows were getting cancelled,” she admits with a laugh.
“Apart from making my album, there was just nothing happening and I thought wow, okay, MasterChef. I love my food, I love cooking Korean food, so let’s have a go at that.”
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“It was quite interesting being in that kitchen that I saw on TV with all these incredible people that I wouldn't usually hang out with, really cool celebrities and actors and actresses and athletes.”
While the contestants didn’t endure the full MasterChef experience by living together in the same house - “Thank God, my introverted self would just die” - Dami says that she definitely endured the stress that typically comes with the show’s territory.
“I found it really hard to be cooking under pressure with a time clock ticking away and the judges sort of yelling at you and coming over to you and having a look,” she details.
“It was definitely not easy, very intense, but also kind of fun because it's like, when else am I going to be cooking on national television?”
Dami explains that each of the celebrities were given a “generic guideline” heading onto the show with the types of recipes they should prepare, like their ‘best dish’ or ‘a meal with eggs’.
“Honestly I didn’t have a lot of time to practice because I was travelling,” she confesses. “So I was home for a couple of days before I had to actually go and film.
“I felt very underprepared, to be honest. If I were to go back, I would prepare so much more.”
Despite the stress, she says that the cooking show was incomparable to her first foray into reality TV: The X Factor.
“With The X Factor, I’d always wanted to become a singer-songwriter and I’d always been in music, and so going on a talent show was kind of like my last resort,” she recalls.
“I was like, ‘I'll just try everything I can so that I can live my dream of being able to perform’. I was desperate.
“Whereas MasterChef I’m like, eh! Let’s just cook some kimchi! It was still stressful, don’t get me wrong. Being filmed while you're cooking is very stressful, but just not as much as The X Factor.”
Having now starred on two Channel Ten series - Celebrity MasterChef and last year’s season of Dancing With The Stars - it’s easy to assume that Dami might want to make it a trifecta and appear on a future season of The Masked Singer.
After all, she’s already been guessed a number of times by fans online and one of the judges is her former X Factor mentor, Dannii Minogue.
“I just feel like everybody’s been asking me if I’m going on it so I’m like, well, if I’m that predictable, I better not do it. So I won’t do it,” she says.
“Dannii would know it was my voice. And like, who wants to put on a fake voice and sing? If I was on it, I’d do proper singing, but then she’d know.”
However, if fans wanted an idea of what Dami would be like on The Masked Singer, they can check out her experience on the Korean version of the show, King Of Masked Singer, where she came second in 2015, here.
For now, Dami has just released her new single Pray, a powerful, anthemic track co-written with Audius (Delta Goodrem’s Born To Try), and is set to release her long-awaited sixth studio album, My Reality, on October 29.
You can stream Pray on all music platforms here.
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