By now we all know that 65-year-old supermodel Christie Brinkley had a serious fall while rehearsing for Dancing with the Stars. Brinkley ended up breaking her arm and wasn't able to compete on this season as planned. The good news, though, was that she was able to convince her daughter, Sailor, who's also a model, to compete in her place, meaning that the competition was able to go on with a full roster of stars in place when Monday's premiere came around. Unfortunately, talk show host Wendy Williams doesn't believe some of what we've been told about Brinkley's injury.
On her talk show this week, Wendy Williams played the Dancing with the Stars rehearsal video that shows Christie Brinkley falling and breaking her arm, and proclaimed, "Well, that looked fake as hell." Williams then went on to say that Brinkley's "alleged" injury was faked so that she could get her daughter on the popular reality competition to try to boost the fledgling model's profile and, hopefully, also her career.
This story has taken off, but as you might imagine, Christie Brinkley has some strong words for Williams in response, and began crying while defending herself when she appeared on The Talk Thursday. When Sharon Osbourne mentioned that "people like Wendy Williams" were saying Brinkley was faking, here's what she had to say:
It wasn’t people like Wendy Williams. It was Wendy Williams. Let’s just be real. Wendy Williams started this rumor, which was stunning to me, stunning, because I’ve been on Wendy’s show a few times. For some reason she liked me and would call on me to support her in tough times… So I thought it was a mistake when someone said she was doing this.
During Christie Brinkley's time on The Talk, which started the show, not only did she show her x-rays, but she also described how the injury happened and what procedures had to be done for her to start healing. Brinkley said that she fell and tried to protect herself, as you do, but landed at "exactly the wrong angle" when she put her right hand down to try and cushion her fall. After her hand hit the ground, Brinkley says she knew it was broken because when she grabbed her wrist she "felt sharp things" in there as though she were actually holding it together. Ouch.
Brinkley is also sporting some pretty nasty bruises and swelling that run up past her right elbow from the injury, and she lifted the arm of her pink blazer to show those off to the audience as well. She even rubbed them with her hand and the opposite sleeve of her jacket to prove that she wasn't wearing purple and blue makeup to fake all that discoloration.
As Christie Brinkley tells it, she "shattered" both of the major bones in her arm, along with breaking a smaller bone. The surgery to get her back on the road to recovery was only supposed to take an hour and a half, but ended up taking three hours, and they had to put in a plate, "a thing that wraps around the corner," and from looking at her x-ray, there are definitely some pins or screws in there, as well.
Christie Brinkley wanted to make it clear to everyone that she never would have cut her time on Dancing with the Stars so short had it not been for her injury, and began tearing up again when talking about how much she was enjoying the experience:
I was having the best time, the best time. I was loving every second of it. And I had the greatest partner, Val. He is incredible and we got along like a house on fire. We really did. As he would say, ‘We have great chemistry.’ We were having a ball. I was like, why didn’t I do this sooner? Because I’d been asked years before.
Wow. Well, while Christie Brinkley was clearly saddened by the fact that Wendy Williams didn't believe that she truly hurt herself while practicing for Dancing with the Stars, she did take time while she was on The Talk to thank all the ladies for supporting and believing her, and thanked Osbourne in particular for defending her on the show earlier in the week.
Dancing with the Stars has just begun Season 28, so you can watch Sailor Brinkley dance (probably with mom Christie in the audience) along with all the other (sometimes controversial) stars (some who might have unfair advantages) when the show returns Monday, September 23, at 8 p.m. EST on ABC. For more on what you can catch on the small screen in the coming weeks, be sure to bookmark our 2019 fall premiere guide!
