14 DAY TRIAL // Maksim Chmerkovskiy left ABC’s Dancing With the Stars in 2014, but he’s had several appearances since as guest judge. Either he’s not looking forward to any more of these or he’s got a greenlight from producers to speak his mind, because he’s dishing the dirt on the popular show in a new podcast.
Hosted by Matthew Cole Weiss and Theo Von, it’s called Allegedly and went online on Tuesday. In it, Maks holds nothing back on his experience as a pro dancer on DWTS, including his celebrity hookups (there was only one, apparently, with Willa Ford), his former partner Hope Solo, and how he and producers fell out over his refusal to play a character for the camera.
Maks hates Hope Solo
Though many of the things Maks says on the podcast are bound to ruffle feathers, none of them is as potentially scandalous as his claim that Hope Solo, with whom he was partnered on Season 13 in 2011, is a horrible person - absolutely the worst.
If you’re not a fan of DWTS, you should know that these 2 have a history together. Though he was always sticking up for her with the judges, Solo left the show slamming the door and saying that Maks had slapped her because she couldn’t get a move right.
Then, in her 2012 memoir, she recalled other abusive incidents, with Maks manhandling her and often hitting her to get her to do a move or a pose just the way he thought it should be.
He always denied the accusations. Apparently, the only reason they were ever made is that Hope is not a good person.
“She’s just a [expletive]y person,” he says. “You can have a [expletive]y life growing up, but if you’re a bad person, there’s no excuse for that.”
Maks hates the DWTS producers too
As for the chance of coming back on DWTS as a regular, don’t hold your breath. Maks says that his departure is definitive and argues that he couldn’t have stayed on the show for much longer because he was never the kind of guy to turn himself into a character for the cameras.
Ultimately, this was what was asked of him and which he refused to do, which led to a huge blowout with producers. His mission was to get someone assigned to him to dance so they could win the competition, but producers kept asking him to make things more interesting for the cameras.
He also says that he was heavily censored on the show but he never objected to it because “Mickey Mouse was writing my checks.”
