If there’s any toxicity related to Dancing With the Stars, it’s not showing up in the ballroom, Sharna Burgess says.
The Australian dancer, a pro on DWTS between Season 16 and Season 30, sounded off on the toxicity rumors in a Q&A on her Instagram Stories on Friday after a user asked what she thought the phrase “DWTS toxic” meant.
In reply, per People, Burgess said she had never heard that term but assumed it referred to a certain faction of the DWTS fandom.
“It’s certainly not the show itself or the people on it,” she added. “Gosh, I hate even seeing those two words together. It’s so sad. But yeah, the online hate is just another level these days. On the flip side, so is the online love and adoration.”
Burgess mused that the toxicity just shows the “ying [sic] and yang” of a TV show that is as popular as DWTS has become again, now that Season 34 has delivered the best ratings in nearly a decade.
“Where there are more people [who] love something, there will also be more people [who] don’t,” she explained. “And with how popular it is again with this second coming, every man and his dog wants to go viral with their ‘hot takes’ while most of them would cry for a photo with any of the people they speak so [poorly] of if given the chance.”
Burgess isn’t the only one dismissing the toxicity rumors. In a new interview on the House of Maher podcast, Emma Slater said there’s a “collaborative, supportive atmosphere” on DWTS, saying the ABC show has “become really wholesome.”
She went on: “I don’t want to dwell on it too much, but there was an article that came out that was like, ‘Oh, toxic energy in Dancing With the Stars.’ And it, like, could not be further from the truth.”
Alan Bersten added: “Also, a lot of these articles are so wrong. When [Slater] got eliminated, there was an article [saying], ‘Alan and Emma are fighting.’ … My mom’s like, ‘Are you guys fighting?’ I was like, ‘What?’”
In fact, Bersten and Slater are partners but not feud partners…
Dancing With the Stars, Season 35, TBD, ABC & Disney+