The cast of Dancing With the Stars is reacting to host Tyra Banks' elimination mishap on the Monday October 5 episode. Tyra mistakenly announced dancing couple Monica Aldama and Val Chmerkovskiy as safe, before calling the duo back out to take their correct spot in the bottom two.
Tyra Banks started her reality TV hosting career on America's Next Top Model in 2003 before taking on America's Got Talent in 2017. Now, Tyra has taken her hosting talent to the ballroom. After Dancing With The Stars announced that former host Tom Bergeron and co-host Erin Andrews would not be returning for season 29, the show revealed that Tyra Banks would be taking over for them. Longtime fans of the show were not pleased to hear about the change in hosts, nor are they impressed with Tyra's hosting skills. Fans that have continued to watch the show, despite the upset of the new host, have been quick to attack Tyra on social media. Tyra gave DWTS viewers yet another reason to bash her when she made the mistake of all mistakes on Monday night's episode. During the elimination portion of the night, Tyra accidentally announced one of the bottom two couples as safe. She then realized there were still three couples left in the ballroom, rather than just two. Tyra corrected her error before repeatedly reminding the viewers at home that this is what happens with live television. She went on to share that everyone is human in a plea for forgiveness from fans before closing out the show.
DWTS fans were not the only ones who had something to say about Tyra's mishap. The cast of the show shared what it was like from their perspective watching it all go down. Us Weekly reported that professional dancer Val Chmerkovskiy compared the mess up to that of Steve Harvey's Miss Universe disaster. Val and celebrity partner Monica Aldama were put through a whirlwind of emotions in a matter of moments before being saved from elimination by the judges' votes. Val later took to Twitter to share his thoughts on the night, correlating the similarities to when Steve Harvey announced the wrong winner at the 2015 Miss Universe pageant. The dancer wrote, "Just got Steve Harvey’d #dwts." Val and Monica shared in a post-show interview that the moment felt very "surreal." Val explained his emotions by saying, "I'm just thinking 2020, you know?" The eliminated couple, Anne Heche and Keo Motsepe, had the same explanation when speaking with Good Morning America Tuesday morning. Keo said, "Honestly, like it’s 2020. Happy 2020, anything can happen.”
Other dancers and celebrity contestants who were not in the bottom two or a part of the mayhem also shared their emotions regarding what happened. Most explained the situation as being very confusing and somewhat like a rollercoaster of emotions. Former Bachelorette Kaitlyn Bristowe pointed out the positive in the situation, stating, "Thank God it wasn't the finale!" Her dancing partner, Artem Chigvintsev, noted that this has never happened in the history of the show. American figure skater Johnny Weir explained the occurrence to Us Weekly as something that everyone will be talking about. He went on to reassure fans that it was, in fact, a technical error from the control room. Judge Bruno Tonioli praised Tyra for how she handled the last minute confusion.
No matter how much Dancing With the Stars fans want to put the blame on Tyra Banks for this live TV misfortune, it seems as though it is really the control room they should be bashing. Although, in the show's 29 seasons with Tom Bergeron as the host, nothing like this ever occurred. That tidbit could give fans a fighting argument against Tyra. Hopefully nothing like this will occur again throughout the rest of this season's eliminations.
Dancing With the Stars airs Mondays at 8 pm ET on ABC.
Source: Us Weekly, Val Chmerkovskiy