Former Dancing With the Stars pros Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Peta Murgatroyd didn’t dance around their feelings on the subject of Taylor Swift backup dancer Jan Ravnik being cast as a professional dancer on the show.
On a recent episode of Murgatroyd’s The Penthouse With Peta podcast, she and Chmerkovskiy — who both previously served as resident pros in past seasons of the competition series and have been married since 2017 — questioned Ravnik’s place on the program. After accompanying the pop superstar on her global Eras Tour for nearly two years, the Slovenian-born dancer joined the cast of DWTS as a coach in August.
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“Jan has absolutely no business being a pro on Dancing With the Stars,” Chmerkovskiy said frankly. “There’s zero foundation, technique, quality, understanding of the partnership.”
“Bro, I’m getting emotional,” he continued, rejecting Murgatroyd’s claim that Ravnik should be given “grace” as it’s only his first season on the show. “It is absurd. It’s unreal how blind we have to be, and God forbid say what’s obviously there. He had no idea what the foxtrot is supposed to look like. How are you going to expect him to teach it and deliver that message in a format that is completely different?”
Billboard has reached out to DWTS producers for comment.
The podcast comes shortly after Ravnik advanced to the next round of DWTS with his celebrity partner, Jen Affleck of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, following their performance on a Wicked-themed episode of the show featuring guest judge Jon M. Chu. The duo scored 8’s across the board — but Murgatroyd said she thinks Affleck is at a disadvantage with the Eras Tour alum as her partner.
“I feel bad, because she’s not getting taught the basics that she needs to,” said the podcaster. “He’s a Taylor Swift dancer, it’s the obvious reason why he was hired — apart from that, he’s a lovely guy, he looks great, he’s a great dancer.”
Despite Ravnik’s positive qualities, Murgatroyd added: “Hiring a non-ballroom dancer to teach ballroom dancing to a celebrity as a job is outrageous.”
The 34th season of DWTS kicked off in mid-September. In addition to Affleck, Whitney Leavitt — also of Mormon Wives fame — as well as Alix Earle, Robert Irwin, Scott Hoying of Pentatonix, Lauren Jauregui of Fifth Harmony, Jordan Chiles, Hilaria Baldwin and Danielle Fishel were cast as the show’s latest flock of celebrity amateur dancers.
And despite still coming down from the high of Swift’s groundbreaking Eras trek, Ravnik expressed how excited he was to be joining DWTS as a pro following his casting announcement in August. “I traveled all around the world with Eras Tour, and now I’m coming to the ballroom stage for Dancing With the Stars,” he said at the time in video statement on Good Morning America. “Mirrorball never goes out of style, and we are ready to win it.”
See Chmerkovskiy and Murgatroyd’s full discussion about Ravnik on DWTS below.
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