Tavis claims he could not fit in rehearsal time with his latest book tour and the 'Dancing with the Stars' producers knew it, but they signed him up anyway.
- Sep 24, 2014
AceShowbiz - Tavis Smiley criticized "Dancing with the Stars" producers following his elimination. The talk show host blamed the show's execs for casting him in the first place despite knowing his busy schedule which wouldn't allow him to rehearse properly for the competition.
"Producers shouldn't sign up people who can't commit the time when they are told up front that the person is going to be on a book tour," he told PEOPLE after the Tuesday, September 23 results show. "We gave them the entire book-tour schedule in advance!"
The author added, "This is not about sour grapes. It's about saying I think the fans deserve to have stars on this show who have the time to commit to learning the dances so [pro partner Sharna Burgess] and other professionals don't waste their time trying to do something that's just humanly impossible."
"I think part of what fans may have been saying tonight was, 'Why keep Tavis around if he doesn't have the time to really dedicate to this?' " Tavis continued, pointing out that fans ultimately chose to keep contestants who are fully committed to the show. "Some people thought that Michael [Waltrip] didn't have his best night last night. And he wasn't the best. His scores were lower than ours, that's the fact. But I think the fans can see that Michael is here, and he has time to actually commit to this. He's not on a book tour."
"I asked for the spring," he went on revealing. "With all due respect to the producers, when they came after me, I said to them specifically I'm going to be on a book tour in September. Everybody on this show will tell you it's harder than it looks. You have to spend time perfecting. I've been a talk show host for 20-something years and I'm still getting better at it. But you can't perfect this in eight or 10 weeks."
Tavis and Sharna only had 10 hours to prepare for this week's routine as he promoted his latest book, "Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Final Year". The pro dancer admitted it was hard to follow Tavis around the U.S. to steal times to practice in between his scheduled events.
"At that point, you have to steal five minutes wherever you can ... elevators, hallways, waiting backstage before he does his lectures," she shared. "It was a very intense process. I definitely had anxiety the whole week. But we made it work the best we can. At the same time, I'm incredibly proud of what we were able to do in 10 hours."
Tavis only has two more weeks of promoting his book and could've focused on "DWTS" if he had got through two more weeks. "I told Shar if we miraculously got through two more weeks of this, we could really drill down," he said. "But the clock ran out on us. It's like a football game. Sometimes you are making a comeback, and the clock just runs out. I did the best I could with the time we had. No regrets!"
Tavis became the second eliminated celebrity contestant on "DWTS" season 19 despite not getting the lowest score. Michael Waltrip who was on the bottom of the scoreboard survived and will return next Monday along with Alfonso Ribeiro, Antonio Sabato Jr., Bethany Mota, Janel Parrish, Jonathan Bennett, Lea Thompson, Randy Couture, Sadie Robertson and Tommy Chong in the "Movie Night" episode.
