‘The Voice’: Drama as Reba McEntire Steals Gwen Stefani’s Singer Frankie Torres

Reba McEntire played some mind games on Tuesday’s (October 22) episode of The Voice as she made a last-minute decision to steal a contestant from fellow coach Gwen Stefani.

The latest round of Battles saw Team Gwen’s Frankie Torres and Gabrielle Zabosky performing a duet of INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart,” which received high praise from coaches and viewers alike. However, Stefani could only pick one act to move on in the competition and chose to take Zabosky.

As per the rules, the other coaches had the option to hit their Steal button and add the eliminated act to their team. For a moment, it looked like nobody was willing to press their button and Torres thanked the coaches for the experience and said her goodbyes.

Then, McEntire surprised everyone by slamming her button and stealing Torres for her team. Explaining her decision, the Queen of Country confessed to manipulating Stefani into picking Zabosky so that she could jump in and steal Torres.

“I loved her singing. I did a little play there because I did say Gabrielle, so you’d go with Gabrielle [and] I could have Frankie,” McEntire told Stefani, who replied, “Wow!”

“Either way, I was gonna steal because I love your performance, your singing, everything about it,” McEntire said to Torres, who was thrilled to be paired up with such an icon.

“I’m so excited to work with Reba,” Torres said in an interview after the Steal. “She was my first concert. Her and Kelly Clarkson. I went for Kelly and I stayed for Reba and it was amazing.”

As the coaches returned to their chairs, Michael Bublé told McEntire, “That was some last-minute stuff right there.”

“Really tricky,” she replied.

Torres is a 24-year-old singer from Minnetonka, Minnesota, and has been performing since she was 8-years-old when she joined School of Rock in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. According to her official NBC bio, she stayed with the program for almost a decade, through which she went on six national tours.

She now performs with her rock cover band Midnight Rambler, playing at bars, parties, and weddings. Torres also works for a nonprofit program offering therapeutic support services to young adults with physical and intellectual disabilities. She has been open about her own mental health struggles following the death of her father, who battled ALS.

The Voice, Mondays and Tuesdays, 8/7c, NBC