“I was under so much pressure to, like, ‘Oh, you have to win,'” he confesses.
“For me it was always, very relevant, to be at least until the semi final because then for the finale you’ll come back and that way you’ll have the paycheck,” he continued.
In a new interview, he opened up about pushing himself — and his celeb partners — hard in the competition. In his time on the show, it made it to the final round five times and and won once, in Season 18, when he was paired with Olympic figure skating champion, Meryl Davis.
He has a bit of a reputation for being tough on his partners, telling US Weekly, “There’s definite ways to influence you to want to do your best and stay on and so I think that somebody like me, for example, that backfires.”
“Sometimes that competitiveness kicks in because on top of it, if I don’t keep making it week after week, I don’t get paid. And so now my time here becomes, like, ‘Now I’m wasting time,'” he added.
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“For me it was always, very relevant, to be at least until the semi final because then for the finale you’ll come back and that way you’ll have the paycheck,” he continuned.
Speaking about his finale moment with Davis, he added, “I don’t think I had a bonus. Maybe I didn’t. I dunno. The thing you know is how busy you are, how completely engulfed in the show you are. Especially at that time, I was under so much pressure to, like, ‘Oh, you have to win.'”
Nonetheless, Chmerkovskiy wanted his partners to make the most of their time on the show, hoping they got wanted they wanted to get out of it.
“Honestly, it’s whatever they want. They want to push themselves. They want to have a great time. They want to be athletically inclined. They want it to be more of a showmanship,” he explained. “It’s whatever you want, but I just want you to have a fantastic time.”
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The one-time Mirrorball winner decided to depart the show in Season 25, explaining at the time that he wanted to focus on his family with wife Peta Murgatroyd.
He, however, hasn’t ruled out a return, claiming he’s asked to return every year.
“I think today I would come back,” he said. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s to judge or to dance, I think it’s just fun to even be in this situation. There were moments in my journey with Dancing With the Stars that I’ve never thought that 20 years later I will be as part of it as I was.”
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