Spike’s Lip Sync Battle is becoming one of the most viral shows on television today and has been the stage for many of the world’s top celebrities to explore the world of drag performing.
The idea for the show came from The Office’s John Krasinski: two celebrities battle each other with lip sync performances. It started as a recurring skit on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and was formed into a free standing show on the Spike cable channel hosted by rapper/actor LL Cool J and model Chrissy Teigen.
The most recent episode pitted Tampa native and The Hateful Eight star, Channing Tatum, against his wife Jeena Dewan-Tatum.
Dewan-Tatum went drag king for her rendition of “Pony” by Ginuwine, but it was Magic Mike himself who raised the bar, first performing “Let It Go” from the Disney film Frozen in full Elsa costume, then pulling out all the stops as Beyoncé in “Run the World (Girls).” The latter performance had the pop queen Ms. Bey come out from backstage to join Tatum on stage. The Beyoncé-inspired Tatum starts at 1:55.
From the first episode, which premiered April 2, 2015, it has been Spike’s highest rated show. The show has pitted some of the biggest stars from movies, music, sports and television against each other and spawned some huge viral videos on social media.
Anne Hathaway performing Miley’s Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball,” The Rock doing Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” but with the start of season 2 the gloves came off.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt was the first to completely commit to his performance with Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation,” performing in full drag and re-creating the famous dance from Jackson’s music video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXpGdIWzgOE
