14 DAY TRIAL // Michael Bolton is the second celebrity to get the boot from the current season of ABC’s Dancing With the Stars but he’s not leaving without kicking up a fuss about how he was treated by the judges.
As ABC News informs – and the video below can confirm – after his elimination, Bolton spoke his mind and blasted Bruno for not going easier on his feelings when rating his and Chelsea Hightower’s jive.
Though Michael knows that it was not the best dance of the evening, the way judge Bruno Tonioli referred to it was incredibly “disrespectful” and “inappropriate.”
“You heard the tone. Even Len [Goodman] stopped him and said, ‘That’s inappropriate,’ and I think he should apologize publically and be reprimanded for it,” the crooner says.
What upset Bolton the most was not so much the fact that Bruno called his dance the “worst jive… ever seen,” but rather that he didn’t do so in gentler words.
“I am a dog lover, but you make it so hard for me. You should have taken your bone and gone back to the dog house. You did it all very, very, very badly,” Bruno said on the show about the dance number that featured a doghouse and a bone as props.
“To me, [Bruno] let everybody down. My mom was there, she flew in. She’s 90 and I thought she was going to really enjoy it, and I just didn’t expect that level of disrespect from him,” Michael says.
Because his fellow celebrity dancers are backing him up, Bolton wants an apology from Bruno, if not from the producers of the show, if possible.
However, regardless of how entitled he thinks he is to it, it’s not going to happen, DWTS producers are telling the media.
As they see it, it’s Bruno’s job to be honest to dancers even in those cases when being so treads on some toes (and some very inflated egos) – therefore, he did nothing wrong.
“Bruno’s role as a judge is to give his honest opinions on the quality of the dances he’s judging, which is what he did in this case,” DWTS producers say in a statement.
“While we respect the feelings of our celebrities and dancers, we don’t feel Bruno should be expected to apologize for doing his job,” they add.
Chances are Bruno too feels Bruno shouldn’t apologize and, hopefully, this will be the end of this. Below is Michael Bolton explaining why he feels he deserves an apology.