REALITY TVWar Of Words! 'DWTS' Responds To Taryn Manning — They Turned *Her* Down
Well, this is awkward. Taryn Manning was never asked to be part of Dancing With the Stars, a DWTS insider tells OK!.
This comes after Manning said she had been asked to do the show several times but had no interest in getting involved. "I have this weird phobia that competing on the show means you’re a has-been, and I never want to believe that’s the case. Maybe it’s my own stuff, but yeah, I’m definitely a good dancer," she told Page Six.
"It seems that Taryn has a history of habitually lying to the press and putting forth a negative false narrative about others in order to compliment her self-serving agenda. Her comments regarding the talented cast as 'has-beens' couldn’t be further from truth, and it’s unfortunate she feels that way. I can’t help but wonder if it’s a projection of her inner feelings towards her own career," the insider explains.
"Her representation attempted to pitch her to us a while back, we kindly passed. Her claim that she was asked to join DWTS once, never mind 'many times,' is completely false. Additionally, her thoughts that the contestants consist of 'has-beens' appears to be her own jealousy of the talent we have chosen to cast," the source adds.
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This isn't the first piece of drama surrounding DWTS this year, and it's unlikely to be the last.
On Monday, October 5, host Tyra Banks almost sent home the wrong couple, and it seems like she's still upset about her big blunder.
"Tyra was warned after she attacked the staff last week to move on. Blaming others isn’t a good look, and it isn’t smart. There are literally hundreds of people working behind-the-scenes to make her and the show a success, and she keeps trashing them," a source exclusively told OK! at the time.
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"Tyra just cannot let last week’s elimination error go. She brings it up in every meeting, but no one thought she was going to bring it up on-air during the live show again. At this point, the staff is close to revolting. Tyra is going to have a mutiny on her hands if she isn’t careful," the insider explained.
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Banks chose to address the mistake on Monday, October 12. "Speaking of voting, we want to clear something up that happened last week when we were announcing the results,” the model said.
"Make no mistake, all of your votes were definitely counted and the correct bottom two couples were named. However, what you did not see was that there was a technical issue behind the scenes that caused the names on my cards to be listed incorrectly."
As Banks is now an executive producer on the show, she has unprecedented power over DWTS. The new season's ratings were up 30 percent compared to last year, which gave Banks a positive start to her new stint.
However, aside from the elimination mistake, things haven't been great for the businesswoman.
"The show has always struggled to get top celebrities into the ballroom, with Kim Kardashian possibly being the biggest name to ever dance. Tyra implied she could call all her famous friends and get them to join the show, but so far it is not happening," sources told Rob Shuter's "Naughty But Nice" podcast.
