Reba McEntire is enjoying her first season as a coach on The Voice. The Grand Ole Opry member is joined this season by Gwen Stefani, John Legend and Niall Horan, three people who make the experience even more fun for McEntire, who is loving the opportunity to help aspiring singers, while on a national TV show.
“It is a different part of me coming out because it’s non-scripted,” McEntire shared with Everything Nash and other outlets during a recent virtual media event. “It is. You just go have fun, which I like to do that. And cutting up with Niall and Gwen and John, and jabbing them and doing that competitive thing, it is just hysterical. And they come up with some of the funniest skits for us to get to do. So it just brought out my personality that a lot of people haven’t seen. If you see a concert, you’ll see a little bit of it. It’s just me being a me.”
McEntire started out as part of The Singing McEntires, with her siblings, before she launched her solo career. At the time, reality TV talent shows were still decades away, but the 68-year-old says she thinks something like The Voice would have been helpful to her, even back then.
“I think I would’ve benefited greatly from it, because I do love advice and I take it really seriously,” McEntire says. “We all laugh about, would anybody turn a chair for us now? Niall said, ‘Oh, absolutely not.’ And Gwen said, ‘Oh no, I would’ve never gotten turned for it. ‘ I feel the same way. You have to have something. Maybe they would have, I don’t know. But I’m sure glad it turned out the way it did … It’s a lot of fun. It’s very gratifying, and we’re very grateful to get to do it.”
Still, while McEntire loves being on The Voice, there is one part that she isn’t a fan of: the Battle Rounds, when she has to eliminate some of her teammates.
“What surprises me more than anything is how attached you get to the contestants,” McEntire shares. You work with them, and then you’re gonna have to let one of them go … I don’t like sending anybody home. I don’t like this part. [I said], ‘Let’s change the rules.’ Everybody laughed. You can’t do that. But I think that’s what I really was the most shocked at, how attached you get to these contestants.”
McEntire’s Not That Fancy: Simple Lessons on Living, Loving, Eating, and Dusting Off Your Boots, landed at the top of the New York Times Best Seller list, as well as the best-selling lists by The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Publishers Weekly. The book’s accompanying Not That Fancy album, landed in the No. 1 spot on the Country Album chart as well. Both are available for purchase at Reba.com.
The Voice airs on Monday and Tuesday nights at 8:00 PM ET on NBC.
Read ‘Reba McEntire: 11 Things to Know About the Country Music Legend’ here.
Photos courtesy of NBC
