The Block's Shaynna Blaze sets the record straight on 'secret' rival TV network gig

The Block judge Shaynna Blaze has set the record straight, after it was reported that she kept her appearance on Channel 10's The Masked Singer a secret from her Channel 9 bosses.

Speaking to The Courier Mail, Shaynna said she ‘absolutely’ had to tell her boss about her new gig, revealing there was ‘only one person at Channel Nine who knew’.

“That was the most important person,” she said.

“I was very lucky that I had flexibility in my contract so I could do something else but of course, I told the main person because if I didn’t and just waited until the night, I don’t know how that would go down."

Speaking to Yahoo Lifestyle Australia after her unmasking, Shaynna said her colleagues at The Block were 'really shocked'.

"I mean, Darren and I talk all the time. So the fact that he didn't know he was just like 'Are you kidding me?'," she said.

"When I was in Sydney doing it we were meant to catch up for dinner but we just, you know, schedules didn't align so it was quite funny.

"But yeah, I had a few people that had no idea. And it was great to keep it a secret and the fact that, you know, travel is such a big thing in my job, but it was nothing for me to be gone for three or four weeks at a time."

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The day after she was unmasked as Bluebottle on The Masked Singer, judge Dave Hughes claimed that despite The Block and the singing show going head-to-head in the same time slot, Shaynna didn’t tell anyone at the Nine Network about her celebrity side gig.

“She said she doesn’t have an exclusive clause in her [Nine] contract, so she thought, ‘I love to sing, I’ve been a cabaret singer in the past, people don’t really know about it now … I’m gonna go on Masked Singer, and The Block can find out on the night’,” Dave Hughes said on his radio show, 2Day FM’s Hughesy, Ed and Erin.

“So Scotty Cam would’ve found out while he was sitting down with his popcorn watching.”

Interior designer Shaynna took to her Instagram account when her unmasking was revealed, saying she didn’t even tell her family and friends.

“This was one of the hardest things to keep quiet about,” she wrote.

She continued: “I travel a lot for work, so it was easy to say I was on a work trip, but in the couple of weeks leading up to the Masked Singer Emma, my daughter-in-law, said to Carly and Jess, ‘I think this is the year for your Mum to be on the show, I mean, she went to Sydney…’

“I laughed it off and after a few days of funny family conversations it was forgotten about until Bluebottle arrived. I was overseas and I knew it was going to air so I was waiting. They were on to it and Jess said, ‘As if we don't remember our lullaby as kids’, but I didn’t entertain their suspicions, so they stayed just that.”

Shaynna went on to say that she wanted to do the show “for the fun, for the reveal and for the joy of singing incognito”.

“Frustratingly I lost my voice two weeks before so I was gargling garlic, lemon and all the lotions and potions just to get me through so I am incredibly proud of where I got in the show. I thought this part of my life was over, just a distant memory locked away, but the past couple of years I have been writing and recording; inspired by writing a song for The Fort movie, and I have to say I am so happy to have my voice again. Watch this space.”

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