Tom Bergeron is opening up about his dismissal from ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, and the former host is not holding back.
The 68-year-old left the reality competition series in 2020 after being openly critical of the producers casting Donald Trump’s White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer in the show’s 28th season. Speaking with the Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans podcast, Bergeron detailed his perspective of the behind-the-scenes conversations that led to his ouster after hosting the hit show for 15 years.
Bergeron says that leading up to the fateful year, he had signed a new contract for three seasons. During a couple of lunches with various producers (whom he did not name), he urged them not to cast any political figures due to the pending presidential election and the increasingly divisive climate: “Make us the wonderful escape from all that divisiveness for two hours a week.” The producers seemingly enthusiastically agreed. But then a few weeks later, he got a phone call from two producers giving him a heads up that Spicer was being cast anyway.
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“And I said, ‘Guys, this is exactly what we said we wouldn’t do!'” Bergeron recalls saying. “And I would have responded the same way if they had booked Hillary Clinton, whom I voted for. ‘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 bullshit.’ So, I was furious.”
Bergeron felt so strongly, he offered to “take the season off.” So producers countered by offering to let him out of his contract entirely.
“It really pissed me off … my temper kicked in,” Bergeron says. “I was at least going to let people know that they fucking lied to me.”
So in August 2019, he took to Twitter to vent his frustration. He posted that he wanted the season to be “a joyful respite from our exhausting political climate and free of inevitably divisive bookings from ANY party affiliations [but that] a decision was made to, as we often say in Hollywood, ‘go in a different direction.’ We can agree to disagree, as we do now, but ultimately it’s their call. I’ll leave it to them to answer any further questions about those decisions.” DWTS fans on social media seemed to agree with Bergeron, with many criticizing the casting decision. “The moment Spicer was announced, my phone started blowing up, people were outraged,” Bergeron said.
Bergeron says his thought process went like this: “‘They screwed me, I’m gonna screw them.’ I wanted the viewers to know this was a step too far. This was a step too far on the cusp of an election year.”
When asked if he gave his producers a heads up about the statement, the former host shot back, “They didn’t deserve to know.”
Continued Bergeron: “I wrote the statement that I wrote, that did not name anybody, that did not name a political party. It merely said, ‘I was told certain things when I was asked my opinion, they agreed, and now they’ve thrown a curveball.’ 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.”
Bergeron added that he wasn’t taking an anti-conservative stance: “Had it been a Democrat, same statement. Honestly. It’s not about my political beliefs. It’s about what is this show at its best. And we were becoming the show at it’s worst.”
Bergeron nonetheless hosted the show for the season, with Spicer being voted out after eight weeks of mocking from social media and the show’s judges. But he says he knew “this is probably my last season … because of that one betrayal … My lawyer had said to me, ‘It’s really well written, but you’re putting a bullseye on your back.'”
The former host also ridiculed people who suggested he might have been fired for appearing on Fox’s The Masked Singer. “C’mon, get a life. I was a fucking taco singing Sinatra, it’s not a reason to fire someone. I had called [the producers] on the carpet … and they don’t like being called a liar in public.”
In July, Bergeron announced he was leaving DWTS, and co-host Erin Andrews departed the show as well. America’s Next Top Model creator and host Tyra Banks was announced as the show’s new host. Bergeron labeled Banks “a curiosity.” Banks left the show earlier this year, with Alfonso Ribeiro (“thrilled for him”) and Julianne Hough (“perfect”) taking over for season 32.
ABC had no immediate comment.
