Season 31 of Dancing with the Stars returned with a bang. TikTok star Charli D’Amelio is competing against her own mother, Heidi D’Amelio. Charli is partnered with returning pro, and fan favorite, Mark Ballas. The duo grabbed the highest score of the night.
Shangela and his partner, Gleb Savchenko are the first male partners in DWTS history. This duo lit up the ballroom with their spicy salsa. Other couples didn’t fare as well.
Real Housewives of New Jersey star Teresa Giudice and her partner, Pasha Pashkov, performed a tango that incorporated a table flip. But Teresa was wooden during the actual dancing part of her routine. She ended up in the bottom two, along with pro Peta Murgatroyd and Sex and the City actor Jason Lewis. Peta and Jason scored an 18/40 for their cha-cha. In a unanimous decision, the judges opted to save Teresa and Pasha. That meant the end of the road for Jason and Peta.
Jason originally decided to do DWTS because of his fiancée. “She had her short list of people that she really hoped I was going to end up with and Peta was on it,” Jason said.
Peta and Jason spoke with US Weekly about their brief stint in the ballroom. “They haven’t done a first-week elimination for so long, but we have a lot of couples this season,” Peta said. “I think they kind of had to start chipping away at the block, you know?” That seems unfair since all the contestants are nervous and getting used to the ballroom.
“We’re all facing the same swords. So, I don’t think it’s unfair. Everybody had the same options,” Jason remarked. “That’s one of the things that’s so nice about this, is nobody’s against anybody,” Jason stated. “It’s been really lovely.” He plans to support his fellow contestants from home.
And he isn’t giving up on dancing. “This was a fear space that I was apprehensive about, obviously,” the actor explained. “So, why not keep going from here and let it bloom into something better?”
In a video clip from US Weekly, Peta discussed her return to the DWTS ballroom. “I had the best time. I obviously wish it could be for much longer than this,” she stated. “I’ll be back doing the other troupe dancing and all the other things that they have going on here right now. I’m just happy to be back,” Peta added.
RELATED: Alfonso Ribeiro Says He Spoke With Tom Bergeron Before Taking Dancing With The Stars Co-Hosting Gig
Peta and her husband, former DWTS pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy, were recently open about their fertility journey. “It’s going really well. We’re very excited. We’re kind of in the last stages of it,” Peta said of their IVF journey in July of 2022. “There should be –fingers crossed– a pregnancy pretty soon.”
She revealed in an Instagram video that the IVF process did not work. Peta wrote in the caption of the video, “I will get my baby, just not right now.…and to all the women who have gone through this multiple times over, I bow down.”
I’m glad that DWTS fans will see Peta back in the ballroom this season.
TELL US- SHOULD DWTS HAVE A FIRST-NIGHT ELIMINATION? ARE YOU SAD TO SEE JASON AND PETA LEAVE?
[Photo Credit: ABC/Andrew Eccles]