The Voice Just Revealed 2 Super-Famous Mega Mentors for Season 26
Two superstars are joining The Voice Season 26 Knockouts.
The Voice's Mega Mentors just got even Mega-er. For the first time in the show's history, two award-winning Artists will help the competing singers through the Knockout round. And they're both super-famous.
The first is former The Voice Coach, talk show host, and Academy Award winner Jennifer Hudson, herself an alum of a singing competition show. The second is singer-songwriter-guitarist Sting, who rose to fame in the '80s as the frontman of English band The Police and has since become a solo star. Both will join the show for Knockouts starting November 11.
Hudson will serve as Mega Mentor for Michael Bublé and Reba McEntire's teams, while Sting will assist Snoop Dogg and Gwen Stefani.
Read on to learn more about what these two Artists are bringing to the table on The Voice Season 26.
Jennifer Hudson is a woman of many mediums
Is there anything Jennifer Hudson can't do? Since she shot to fame in 2004, Hudson has achieved the rarefied status of "EGOT," having won the four most prestigious awards in entertainment: an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony.
In 2006, Hudson gave an acclaimed performance as Effie in the movie-musical Dreamgirls, kicking off a steady film career (she sings the hit song "Memory" in the Cats movie), though she also had roles on television, including NBC's memorable musical drama Smash. Recently, she portrayed the legendary Aretha Franklin in a 2021 biopic.
Hudson has released three original studio albums and a collection of Christmas songs, The Gift of Love. She garnered acclaim for her Broadway debut in The Color Purple, though her Tony is from producing A Strange Loop. Hudson was a Coach on Seasons 13 and 15 of The Voice in the United States after appearing on Seasons 6 through 8 of The Voice U.K.
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Since September 2022, Hudson has been the host of her own syndicated daytime talkshow, The Jennifer Hudson Show; one of the guests on her very first episode was America's Got Talent Judge Simon Cowell. To celebrate 100 episodes of her talk show, Hudson and fellow EGOT and Voice Coach John Legend sang a duet of "Bridge Over Troubled Water."
Hudson has one child, a son named David Daniel Otunga Jr., and is currently in a relationship with the rapper Common.
Sting is one of the few true rock stars
Born Gordon Sumner in 1951, the star never formally changed his name but has been going by the nickname Sting since his early days in music. In the late '70s, he and his band The Police broke out in the U.K. and then worldwide with the hit song "Roxanne," followed by hits like "Don't Stand So Close to Me" and "Message in a Bottle," all of which were written by Sting, as was the band's biggest hit, "Every Breath You Take."
In 1984, the band broke up and Sting launched a successful solo career. "Fields of Gold" and "Brand New Day" are among his best-known post-Police efforts, and the musician has been touring on and off for the better part of the last four decades. He has 17 Grammy Awards.
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Sting wrote the songs for an original musical, The Last Ship, inspired by his father's career as a shipbuilder. The show had a brief run on Broadway and, in 2020, Sting himself played the lead role during a U.S. tour that closed early due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This will be his first appearance on any version of The Voice.
Sting and his first wife, Frances Tomelty, share two children, Fuschia Kate and Joseph. The musician married Trudie Styler in 1992, and they share four children: Eliot, Jake, Giacomo, and actress Mickey Sumner.
How Knockouts work on The Voice Season 26
The uber-competitive three-way Knockouts are back. The Artists are paired against two other teammates, but this time, they will select their own songs to perform individually while their direct competitors watch and wait. Alongside the Coaches, Sting and Hudson will bring their years of experience to guide the Artists into their strongest performances yet. Coaches alone choose the winner from their team to advance to the Playoffs, the last round before the Live Shows. Each Coach has one Save and one Steal in this round.
