Yahoo Lifestyle Anna Delvey Slams ‘Dancing With the Stars’ as ‘Predatory’ After Elimination: They ‘Only Cared About Exploiting Me for Attention’
Anna Delvey is speaking out against “Dancing With the Stars” following her Sept. 24 elimination from the competition.
“I feel that the show so obviously used me to drive up the ratings, that they never had any plans to give me any chance to grow and only cared about exploiting me for attention,” Sorokin told NBC News. “It was predatory of them to try [to] make me feel inadequate and stupid all while I did get progressively better yet they chose to disregard that.”
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Delvey and partner Ezra Sosa were part of the first eliminations of the season — along with Tori Spelling and Pasha Pashkov. During the live episode, co-host Julianne Hough asked her what she’d take from the show after her exit and she responded, “Nothing.” She later told “Good Morning America” that her favorite part of the experience was being eliminated.
Delvey went on Spelling’s “misSPELLING” podcast on Sept. 28 and was asked about the “nothing” comment, stating it “was the truth.”
“You guys told me what I’m supposed to do. I tried to do it and then I still was rejected. And, I’m taking away nothing. This is what I’m taking away from it, because your advice was worthless,” she said. “I felt like, well, they were building me up. It’s like, oh, well, ‘Only if you smile more, only if you do like x y z. It’s going to be so much better for you.’ And it felt like they put so much effort trying to get me on the show, like, make me feel comfortable just to… eliminate me this early.”
She claimed that the elimination of her and Spelling was “an attempt of an embarrassment for us to get eliminated before Eric [Roberts] and Reginald [VelJohnson]” and said the show “felt like a waste of time.”
Ahead of the season’s debut, showrunner Conrad Green defended the decision to cast Delvey despite her criminal past. Delvey, a convicted felon, had to compete with her ankle monitor due to her house arrest. She was arrested in 2017 after posing as a wealthy heiress and defrauding people, hotels and banks. She was convicted of grand larceny in the first, second and third degree.
“I think there is an inherent curiosity about her. She’s very into the world of fashion and those kinds of things, so I think she’ll actually present very well as a dancer. I think people really want to see her,” he said at the time. “She’s a very valid and interesting part of that cast. Yes, she had the issues she’s had, but we’ve had other people on the show who’ve had criminal issues in the past. She served her time. I think it’s perfectly valid for her to be on the show, and I think people have been really curious to see how she performs.”
Variety has reached out to Disney and ABC for comment.
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