Orville Peck shows rare glimpse of face in new Cabaret teaser
Peck has said the decision to ditch his signature mask for his turn on Broadway is to avoid making it "the Orville Peck show”
By Gary Grimes
Everyone’s favourite mysterious gay country hunk Orville Peck is preparing to be publicly unmasked for the first time.
Peck is gearing up to follow in the footsteps of Eddie Redmayne by playing the role of the Emcee in the hit Broadway musical Cabaret on 31 March. The singer’s turn in the role, which has also been played by Adam Lambert since the show transferred to the US, will see him lose his signature leather mask.
Perhaps to ease fans into this new, face-baring phase of his career, Peck has already began teasing the reveal in the press, and now he has given us our first official glimpse of his visage in all its glory in a new teaser video.
In the video, posted to Peck’s Instagram, he can be seen making eyes at the camera through a small mask which he then removes from his face and discards. “Orville Peck is Emcee from March 31,” the post reads. “Do you feel good?”
The artist recently spoke to The New York Times about his decision not to wear the mask on stage. “The mask is part of my expression personally as an artist and a very big personal part of me,” he explained. “But I’m here to play this role and to bring respect and integrity and hopefully a good performance to it. It’s not about me. I’m not trying to make it the Orville Peck show.”
“I wouldn’t have necessarily done this for just anything,” he went on. “But this is probably my favorite musical of all time.”
Of course, true Peck fans will know that whilst this marks his first time appearing maskless since finding mainstream fame, he has previously bared both his face and, well, everything else in a X-rated full frontal shoot for Butt magazine. The images were shot before before the South African star, real name Daniel Pitout, found fame as a musician under the Orville Peck moniker.
“The irony is that if I put my mask on, I’m suddenly not anonymous anymore”
The raunchy photos have been largely scrubbed from the internet though they can still be found by those determined to dig deep enough.
Peck also told the Times that he often goes out in public without his mask, including to popular New York leather bar The Eagle. “The irony is that if I put my mask on, I’m suddenly not anonymous anymore,” he said. “The weird part is for me to be anonymous. I just take my mask off and walk around like normal and then no one knows who I am.”