Kaitlyn Bristowe has cleared up the rumor that she and Dancing with the Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba hated each other when the former The Bachelor star competed on the show in 2020.
Bristowe took home the Mirrorball Trophy in Season 29 of the long-running competition program, winning alongside professional dancer Artem Chigvintsev. She went on to join the 2022 Dancing with the Stars Live! tour, performing with Chigvintsev at 55 of the 66 tour dates.
The media personality sat down for a conversation with Chandler Kinney, one of the current celebrities on Dancing with the Stars and a prominent Disney star, for an episode of her podcast Off The Vine. During the conversation, Bristowe said that while Inaba has no qualms calling contestants out, she feels bad for her because “she’s such a sweetie.”
Newsweek emailed a spokesperson for Inaba for comment on Thursday.
“The judge’s feedback is always—I know they have to do things for TV too, like it’s also a TV show and they are characters on the TV show, they’re also, you know, real people—but they have to play a certain role,” Bristowe said.
Carrie Ann Inaba attends 2023 Variety’s Women Of Reality TV at Spago on November 29, 2023, in Beverly Hills, California. Former “Bachelor” star has said Inaba is unfairly judged.
Monica Schipper/Getty Images
She explained that Inaba is the “hard a***,” Derek Hough is “the class act, [with] very classically trained technique” and Bruno Tonioli is “the hilarious unhinged one.”
Bristowe continued: “Carrie Ann knows what she’s talking about but she’ll call you out and she’s kind of like the Simon Cowell of Dancing With the Stars, which I feel bad for her because she’s such a sweetie.”
“People thought we hated each other on my season because she really would call me out and do certain things. And I mean, the internet was so mean to her, they’re like, ‘You’re so mean to Caitlyn, like you’re a bully,’ and I was like, ‘No, no, everybody calm down.'”
Kinney agreed with Bristowe, saying that when the judges are harsh, it’s because they want you to succeed.
“No, I feel the same way, I’m like, there’s no beef, like, it really is—they’re there to help you,” she said.
“And when they are hard on you it’s because they want you to succeed and their feedback is great and I love that they, it’s like a perfect little Trifecta, they all come from different angles and perspectives to give you what you need to steer you in the right direction and, like, I welcome that, I encourage it, I want it.”
Earlier in the episode, Bristowe said one of her most “humiliating” dances was when she was dressed as Cruella de Vil while dancing the pasodoble, a fast-paced Spanish military march.
“I was supposed to be a fierce, sexy Cruella, I looked like a grandma, it was, everything was wrong about it,” she said.
“It was so bad and I didn’t fully commit because I, I could not hit those—pasodoble, I know it’s meant to be masculine, feminine, but it’s a very masculine dance and it’s very hard-hitting.”
Bristowe explained that she couldn’t commit to what the dance required because she has terrible balance and, at the time, didn’t feel like she could bring out her “fierce” side.
“I did get called out on it, Carrie Ann, you know, she will call you out, she will call you out. And she—but don’t you find that every time she does call you out it puts a fire under your ass and you realize what she was talking about, ‘Oh yeah, I did need to dig a little deeper,'” she said.
Kinney added: “It’s interesting sometimes it is that, like, little hair of a difference that you can feel, like, the camera just amplifies things in a way that you would never expect.”
