Five years after his exit from Dancing With The Stars, original host Tom Bergeron is returning as a guest judge for the show’s 20th anniversary special on Tuesday, Nov. 11.
“It feels really good,” Bergeron said Tuesday on Good Morning America about his return. “I’m really looking forward to it.”
After hosting DWTS since its launch in 2005, Bergeron exited in 2020 after being publicly critical of the show’s choice to cast then-President Donald Trump’s White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer in Season 28.
He told DWTS alum Cheryl Burke on her podcast at the time that he sat down with showrunners in 2019 and discussed potential contestants for the upcoming 28th season. At that time, he and showrunners agreed that the show would be a “wonderful escape from that divisiveness” of the 2020 election cycle.
“In the summer of 2019, I had two lunches—one with that showrunner person and another one with his boss,” Bergeron recalled. “I said, ‘Well look, 2019 is the threshold to an election year in America, we are a very divided country. Just nobody, of any party, don’t go there—just make us the wonderful escape from all that divisiveness for two hours a week.”
“And then a few weeks later, I get a phone call,” he continued. “And they run down the list of who is going to be on the show, and this former showrunner says to me, ‘You might want to sit down for this last one.’ And then they told me who it was, the former press guy for Trump. I said, ‘Guys, this is exactly what we said we wouldn’t do. Don’t go there. This is not the right time, play to our strengths, be the show that gives people a break from all this bulls–t.”
“And that really pissed me off,” Bergeron noted, saying it was this move that led him to releasing his 2019 statement criticizing Spicer’s casting.
“So I wrote the statement that I wrote, that did not name anybody, that did not name a political party,” he said. “It merely said, ‘I was told certain things when I was asked my opinion, they agreed, and now they’ve thrown a curveball.’ I even went so far as to say it’s their right to do that. They’re the producers of the show, if that’s what they want to do they are entitled to do that. We will have to agree to disagree.”
“So at that moment, I knew this is probably my last season, because of that one betrayal.”
Bergeron offered to “take the season off”. Producers responded by offering to let him out of his contract.
Co-host Erin Andrews also departed the show after that season, and Tyra Banks followed as the next host.
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