Tom Bergeron Particulars ‘DWTS’ Firing: “They Screwed Me, I’m Gonna Screw Them”

Tom Bergeron is opening up about his dismissal from ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, and the previous host will not be holding again.

The 68-year-old left the fact competitors sequence in 2020 after being brazenly crucial of the producers casting Donald Trump’s White Home Press Secretary Sean Spicer within the present’s twenty eighth season. Talking with the Intercourse, Lies, and Spray Tans podcast, Bergeron detailed his perspective of the behind-the-scenes conversations that led to his ouster after internet hosting the hit present for 15 years.

Bergeron says that main as much as the fateful 12 months, he had signed a brand new contract for 3 seasons. Throughout a few lunches with varied producers (whom he didn’t identify), he urged them to not solid any political figures because of the pending presidential election and the more and more divisive local weather: “Make us the great escape from all that divisiveness for 2 hours per week.” The producers seemingly enthusiastically agreed. However then a number of weeks later, he received a cellphone name from two producers giving him a heads up that Spicer was being solid anyway.

“And I stated, ‘Guys, that is precisely what we stated we wouldn’t do!’” Bergeron recollects saying. “And I might have responded the identical manner if they’d booked Hillary Clinton, whom I voted for. ‘Don’t go there. This isn’t the fitting time. Play to our strengths. Be the present that provides folks a break from all this bullshit.’ So, I used to be livid.”

Bergeron felt so strongly, he provided to “take the season off.” So producers countered by providing to let him out of his contract totally.

“It actually pissed me off … my mood kicked in,” Bergeron says. “I used to be no less than going to let folks know that they fucking lied to me.”

So in August 2019, he took to Twitter to vent his frustration. He posted that he needed the season to be “a joyful respite from our exhausting political local weather and freed from inevitably divisive bookings from ANY celebration affiliations [but that] a choice was made to, as we frequently say in Hollywood, ‘go in a distinct course.’ We are able to comply with disagree, as we do now, however finally it’s their name. I’ll depart it to them to reply any additional questions on these choices.” DWTS followers on social media appeared to agree with Bergeron, with many criticizing the casting determination. “The second Spicer was introduced, my cellphone began blowing up, folks have been outraged,” Bergeron stated.

Bergeron says his thought course of went like this: “‘They screwed me, I’m gonna screw them.’ I needed the viewers to know this was a step too far. This was a step too far on the cusp of an election 12 months.”

When requested if he gave his producers a heads up concerning the assertion, the previous host shot again, “They didn’t need to know.”

Continued Bergeron: “I wrote the assertion that I wrote, that didn’t identify anyone, that didn’t identify a political celebration. It merely stated, ‘I used to be informed sure issues once I was requested my opinion, they agreed, and now they’ve thrown a curveball.’ They’re the producers of the present. If that’s what they wish to do, they’re entitled to try this. We must comply with disagree.”

Bergeron added that he wasn’t taking an anti-conservative stance: “Had it been a Democrat, identical assertion. Truthfully. It’s not about my political views. It’s about what is that this present at its greatest. And we have been changing into the present at it’s worst.”

Bergeron nonetheless hosted the present for the season, with Spicer being voted out after eight weeks of mocking from social media and the present’s judges. However he says he knew “that is most likely my final season … due to that one betrayal … My lawyer had stated to me, ‘It’s rather well written, however you’re placing a bullseye in your again.’”

The previous host additionally ridiculed individuals who prompt he might need been fired for showing on Fox’s The Masked Singer. “C’mon, get a life. I used to be a fucking taco singing Sinatra, it’s not a cause to fireside somebody. I had known as [the producers] on the carpet … they usually don’t like being known as a liar in public.”

In July, Bergeron introduced he was leaving DWTS, and co-host Erin Andrews departed the present as effectively. America’s Subsequent Prime Mannequin creator and host Tyra Banks was introduced because the present’s new host. Bergeron labeled Banks “a curiosity.” Banks left the present earlier this 12 months, with Alfonso Ribeiro (“thrilled for him”) and Julianne Hough (“good”) taking on for season 32.

ABC had no fast remark.