Tom Bergeron spent 15 years, from 2005 to 2020, internet hosting Dancing With the Stars on ABC so his sudden departure took followers unexpectedly.
On DWTS professional Cheryl Burke’s podcast, Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans, Bergeron revealed how his disagreement with present executives over a controversial casting alternative of hilariously inept former White Home Press Secretary Sean Spicer led to him feeling “screwed”, so he determined to screw them over in return.
Going into the 2020 election yr, Bergeron wished to remain lear of politics to retain DWTS‘ air of escapist pleasure. “I stated, ‘Guys, that is precisely what we stated we would not do. Do not go there. That is, , not the proper time, play to our strengths, be the present that provides individuals a break from all this bulls—,'” Bergeron recalled. However he says a producer and the showrunner on the time had a special concept. A really unhealthy, completely different concept.
The showrunner and producer had been decided to deliver Spicer on and so, in search of a compromise, Bergeron steered he “take the season off.” The execs then countered with their supply to let him out of his contract.
“That is how strongly they felt,” Bergeron stated, including that it “actually pissed me off.”
Feeling “livid,” Bergeron did what any red-blooded human would do and (consulted his attorneys then) took to social media. Hours after Spicer and the remainder of the forged had been introduced for season 28, Bergeron issued a prolonged, shady assertion — with out naming Spicer immediately — blasting the hit present’s execs for steering it away from being a “joyful respite from our exhausting political local weather” freed from “inevitably divisive bookings from ANY social gathering affiliations.”
Bergeron admits that the ABC execs did not know he was going to launch his assertion as a result of, nicely… “they did not should know.”
“They’d screwed me. I am gonna screw them,” Bergeron defined. “However I wished the viewers to know this was a step too far to me. This was a step too far on the cusp of an election yr. And once more — had it been a Democrat, similar assertion.”
Bergeron stated he acquired numerous complaints after DWTS introduced Spicer’s involvement, which signaled the start of the top for him.
“At that second, I knew that is most likely my final season, due to that one betrayal,” he stated. “Up till that time, there have been individuals of character there.” True to his phrase, Bergeron introduced his departure from Dancing With the Stars in July 2020.
The favored competitors sequence has since shuffled by way of completely different hosts and host pairings with Tyra Banks taking the reigns within the twenty ninth season. Within the thirty first season, she was joined by Alfonso Ribeiro, who grew to become the principle host when Banks departed previous to the thirty second season. And after that recreation of musical chairs, Ribeiro and Julianne Hough are the present DWTS hosts.
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