Three years after his shocking departure from Dancing with the Stars (DWTS), TV character Tom Bergeron has sturdy phrases to elucidate his exit: “They screwed me, I’m gonna screw them.”
Throughout a latest look on DWTS professional Cheryl Burke’s “Intercourse, Lies and Spray Tans” podcast, Bergeron stated he left the present after criticizing producers for his or her controversial resolution to ask former White Home press secretary Sean Spicer to compete.
Bergeron, 68, famously hosted the competitors dance present from 2005 to 2020. Regardless of his 15-year tenure with the manufacturing, Bergeron stated his insistence that Spicer shouldn’t be allowed on DWTS didn’t go over effectively.
Bergeron advised Burke he envisioned DWTS as a “great escape” from the common rigmarole of U.S. politics and the state of the nation main as much as the 2020 election.
“I stated, ‘Guys, that is precisely what we stated we wouldn’t do. Don’t go there,’” Bergeron recalled telling a gaggle of the present’s producers over lunch.
The previous host stated he’d already signed a brand new three-season contract by the point Spicer was chosen in 2019. No matter his protestation, Bergeron stated DWTS showrunners have been set on having Spicer in dance sneakers.
Bergeron supplied to take the twenty eighth season of DWTS off. In return, DWTS producers supplied to launch him from the brand new contract, he stated.
“That’s how strongly they felt,” Bergeron defined.
He stated the choice to maintain Spicer ignited his mood and “actually pissed me off.”
“At that second, I knew that is in all probability my final season, due to that one betrayal,” Bergeron continued. “Up till that time, there have been folks of character there.”
Bergeron even launched a disapproving private assertion on the time of Spicer’s casting announcement. Although he didn’t title Spicer particularly, stated he was not aligned with the franchise’s resolution to ebook political figures of any affiliation.
“We will comply with disagree, as we do now, however finally it’s their name,” he stated on the time.
The general public’s response to Spicer’s casting was much like Bergeron’s personal, with folks many outraged to see a political determine, former or lively, within the present’s lineup.
Bergeron mentioned his private assertion on “Intercourse, Lies and Spray Tans” and stated he wished DWTS viewers to know the producers threw him “a curveball.”
He stated he didn’t inform community executives earlier than releasing the assertion as a result of “they didn’t should know.”
“That they had screwed me. I’m gonna screw them,” Bergeron defended. “I wished the viewers to know this was a step too far. This was a step too far on the cusp of an election 12 months.”
“I might have responded the identical method if that they had booked Hillary Clinton, whom I voted for,” Bergeron maintained.
DWTS has not launched an official assertion in response to Bergeron’s newest criticisms.
Bergeron nonetheless hosted the twenty eighth season of DWTS. Spicer was voted out after eight weeks of competitors.
In July 2020, Bergeron and his then-co-host Erin Andrews each introduced they have been leaving DWTS. Internet hosting duties have been subsequently crammed by Tyra Banks.
Banks departed from DWTS earlier this 12 months and was changed by Alfonso Ribeiro and Julianne Hough in Season 32.
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