The latest episode of Dancing with the Stars took an unfortunate turn late in the broadcast, as Tyra Banks found herself smack dab in the middle of a live TV snafu. The first-year host of the ABC competition series made quite the unfortunate mistake when attempting to announce the bottom two teams, convincing one pair that they were safe when, in fact, the opposite was true. The mistake was awkward enough for one DWTS pro dancer to hit up social media and compare Banks' misstep to Steve Harvey's Miss Universe foul-ups back in 2016 and 2019.
For what it's worth, Val Chmerkovskiy was one of the two people most suited top make that comparison, considering he and his Cheer star partner Monica Aldama went from thinking they were completely safe to suddenly being jettisoned into the bottom two. Here's how he reacted on Twitter following the episode.
For those who didn't watch, Monday night's episode pared the overall contestant group down to the Top 13, and in the end, three teams were left on stage waiting to hear their fate. The teams included Vernon Davis and Pete Murgatroyd, Anne Heche and Keo Motsepe, and Chrishelll Stause and Gleb Savchenko, with Val Chmerkovskiy and Monica Aldama having been sent off the stage with all of the other safe couples. Though Tyra Banks was correct in identifying Heche and Motsepe as being one of the bottom two hopefuls, she also erroneously named Davis and Murgatroyd as the other bottom pairing.
Thankfully, depending on how you look at it, Tyra Banks quickly spoke up and admittedly there was a mix up. She then had to call Val Chmerkovskiy and Monica Aldama back onto the stage to take their rightful spot in the bottom two, with Anne Heche and Keo Motsepe being eliminated in the end. (Heche reportedly stormed off the set and refused to talk to anyone after that, according to Page Six.)
Val Chmerkovskiy wasn't the only one who drew comparisons between Tyra Banks' live TV blunder and the highly publicized mistake that Steve Harvey made when hosting the Miss Universe Pageant. At the time, Harvey announced the name of Miss Colombia as the winner instead of the true victor, Miss Philippines, and he took a wild amount of flak for the error in the weeks and months afterward. Considering the grand global stage attached to that annual special, I can't imagine that Banks' gaffe will overshadow Harvey's flub in the long run.
Citing the unpredictability of live TV, Tyra Banks blamed her erroneous information on a control room error (which not all fans were keen to believe), but judge Bruno Tonioli also came to the host's defense, saying:
It's live television, things like this happen, especially with information coming in from all over the country, voting and calculating in such a small amount of time. Tyra was brilliant. She was really good because she took control of the situation. . . . It's a bit tiring, all the negativity, in not even giving people a chance. Just let her be who she is. It's great to work with her.
To his latter point, Tyra Banks has already faced much scrutiny and criticism from Dancing with the Stars fans for joining the show as host and executive producer so shortly after producers fired former hosts Tom Bergeron and Erin Andrews, with the hopes of revitalizing the long-running competition series. It seemed to be working at first, with the Season 29 premiere drawing over 8 million people on the night. However, around 2.4 million people have already fallen out of that audience just three episodes later. I wonder what the ratings would be life if Banks just got every single contestant wrong every time she talked to our about one.
Dancing with the Stars airs Saturday nights on ABC at...wait, no, it airs on Monday nights on ABC at 8:00 p.m. ET. To see what other new and returning shows are on the way, head to our Fall TV 2020 premiere schedule.
