Brooke Burke knew Dancing With the Stars was making a change when producers told her she would not be coming back. What she did not know was why that change included her.
More than a decade later, the former DWTS winner and co-host said the lack of an explanation sent her through a list of possibilities, including her age, culture and ethnicity. Speaking on The Tamsen Show, Burke recalled questioning whether she was still good enough and what she had been bringing to the ballroom, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Burke was 42 when she was dropped in 2014. Her contract had expired and was being renegotiated, but she said preparations for another season appeared to be moving forward to the point that her dressing room was being painted when producers called to say they wanted to make a change. Erin Andrews was announced as her replacement days later.
Burke, now 54, is not alleging that age, ethnicity or culture actually caused her firing, and ABC has not publicly identified any of those factors as part of the decision. She said they were among the possibilities she considered because she never received a more specific explanation than the show’s desire for change.
Burke Says the Firing Made Her Question Everything
View this post on Instagram
The Sept. 3 conversation with Tamsen Fadal returned Burke to the moment she learned the job was gone. She had already won the competition and then spent seasons 10 through 17 co-hosting alongside Tom Bergeron, making the abrupt call more complicated than the end of an ordinary television assignment.
Burke said the firing triggered an uncomfortable internal inventory of what producers might no longer have wanted from her. “Was it my age? Are they looking for a change? Was it culture? Was it ethnicity?” she recalled wondering.
She eventually stopped trying to solve a question for which she might never receive an answer. Burke said she came to view the decision as part of an industry in which people and formats change, even when the person being replaced had believed the relationship was going well.
She Was Already Calling the Exit ‘Shocking’ in 2014
Burke’s surprise was public almost immediately. After learning in February 2014 that she would not return, she joked on social media about suffering a “shocking pre-season elimination.” What has changed more than a decade later is the amount of detail she is giving about the uncertainty that followed.
On Good Morning America the following month, Burke said the most difficult part was the way the decision happened. She had learned only several weeks before the season 18 premiere that she was out, telling the show that the timing had been “a little bit tough,” according to ABC News’ report at the time.
DWTS executive producer Conrad Green publicly thanked Burke for her years with the show but did not identify a specific performance issue or other reason for replacing her. ABC announced Erin Andrews as the new co-host on Feb. 24, pairing her with Bergeron beginning with season 18.
Burke Thinks Erin Andrews May Have Fit What Producers Wanted
Burke has not blamed Andrews for taking the job. In the new interview, she said Andrews did “an absolutely fine job” and considered whether the sportscaster simply offered the kind of profile producers wanted at that particular moment.
Burke described Andrews as especially relevant and potentially more pressworthy at the time, while wondering whether her sports background created a useful kind of “harmony” for the network. Andrews was already familiar to DWTS viewers after competing during season 10 and reaching the finals.
Her ‘DWTS’ Story Started With a Mirrorball
Burke had already built a significant history with the ballroom before she became a host. She competed with Derek Hough during season seven in 2008 and ultimately won the Mirrorball Trophy.
She returned as Bergeron’s co-host beginning with season 10 and remained through season 17. Losing the job therefore carried both professional and practical consequences. Burke told PEOPLE that she was raising four children and carrying significant financial responsibilities at the time, while jobs of that scale did not simply appear every week.
Looking back, Burke said she would have preferred the departure to be handled with greater transparency and would have approached the conversation differently had she been making the decision. She has also credited the setback with pushing her toward new work, including the wellness business that became a major part of her career after the ballroom.