ABC/Eric McCandless
Season 29 of Dancing With the Stars has been concluded for over a week, and Tyra Banks has said she’s excited for the next season of the show. One professional dancer from the show recently spoke out about all the backlash Banks has received while hosting the show.
Banks’s hosting duties were met with plenty of backlash from viewers of the show ranging from her fashion choices to the way she talked to contestants and even the way she walked out into the ballroom. At one point, viewers even launched a petition to get Banks removed from the show.
During an interview with Pop Culture Magazine, professional dancer Britt Stewart talked openly about the hosting drama surrounding the show, and she said she supports Banks.
Stewart Shared Her Support for Banks
In the interview, Britt Stewart shared her support for Banks.
“You know, I really like Tyra,” she said. “She’s a really awesome woman. She goes out of her way to stay connected with us. She personally called all the celebrities, she called us before the season, throughout the season just to check in. So, I know that she really cares about being on the show and doing a great job. I think sometimes that goes unnoticed.”
Stewart isn’t the only one on the show who has shared their support for Banks. In an interview with Extra early on in the season, DWTS judge Derek Hough said that he thought production was happy with her and he thought everyone liked her even after a mistake was made in the announcement of the bottom two in the third episode of season 29.
“You know, the producers came up afterwards and were actually thanking Tyra,” he shared. “They were like, ‘Thank you so much,’ like, ‘you handled that so well.’ There was a technical situation happening in the booth.”
He said that the people behind the scenes were “happy and relieved” with the way the error had been handled and that it “could have been a lot worse.”
Stewart Believes the Hate Comes From the Big Shoes Banks Had to Fill
Stewart also pointed to the fact that some people simply don’t like change as a possible reason for the hate directed at Banks, especially in light of the fact that Tom Bergeron had been hosting the show since season one.
“Tom Bergeron, he’s been there or he had been there since season one,” Stewart said. “And sometimes I feel kind of bad because people gave her a really hard time, and she’s just trying to bring in… her twist on what hosting Dancing With the Stars looks like to her, and that’s going to be different from Tom’s.”
She continued, “I think she held in there like a champ. I think she had a lot of negativity coming at her the whole season. And I think she kept her head up high and continued on.”
Dancing With the Stars will return in 2021 for Season 30.
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