Masked Singer Orville Peck on Being Openly Gay in Country Music: ‘We’ve Always Been There’
Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle EditorOrville Peck grew up in South Africa before moving to Toronto with his family when he was 15.
A theater kid and a trained ballet dancer, he eventually headed to London and appeared in a play in the West End. But his acting career was short-lived because his true passion was making music — country music.“All I ever wanted to do was be a country singer,” Peck says. “I finally got the courage when I was in my 20s to put all of the things I love together and just do the dang thing.”That included taking extreme measures to obscure his identity.
He’s far from the first entertainer to adopt a stage name, but not many have gone the extra mile and masked up — pre-COVID — in every moment of their public lives.
Peck’s collection of about 60 masks range from a rainbow assortment of brightly colored, bedazzled numbers to hard black leather pieces that would make the Village People blush.
