Bristol Palin Says Dancing With the Stars’ Maksim Chmerkovskiy "Hated" Her During Competition
Bristol Palin doesn’t think she and Maksim Chmerkovskiy were in lockstep during their time as costars.
The Dancing with the Stars season 11 alum alleged that Maks, a longtime dance pro on the series, was not her biggest fan during her tenure as a celebrity contestant—claiming he even rolled his eyes whenever she and partner Mark Ballas proceeded to the next week.
“Oh, Maks, he hated me so much,” Bristol told retired DWTS dance pro Cheryl Burke on the latter’s Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans podcast. “Probably just because we kept going through.”
The 33-year-old—whose time on the series was notoriously low-scoring—continued, “I mean, he was real nice at the beginning, but it was one of those things where as we kept going through, the more it was like, ‘Oh gosh, okay.’”
While paired with Mark, Bristol—the daughter of former politician Sarah Palin and Todd Palin—ultimately made it to the finale of the dance competition with Jennifer Grey and Derek Hough taking first place and Kyle Massey and Lacey Schwimmer finishing as the runners up. Maks and his partner Brandy finished in fourth right behind third place finishers Bristol and Mark.
E! News reached out to Maks’ rep for comment but has not heard back.
But while Bristol and Maks never quite found their footing with each other, the Teen Mom OG alum says she and Mark were the perfect pairing.
“I'm like the most introverted person ever,” she noted. “I was so thankful to be partnered with Mark because Mark was so sweet. I'm very appreciative.”
On her first impression of her partner—whom she later reunited with on the all-star season of Dancing with the Stars in 2015, before being eliminated week four—Bristol added, “He was very bubbly, very nice. He's just sweet. He was shorter than I was expecting for sure, but I’m tall.”
And when the show got stressful—and insecurities around her costumes surfaced—she noted Mark was by her side.
“He was like a very good partner,” Bristol added. “He was always very supportive.”
But while her time on Dancing with the Stars came with as many dips as it did leaps, Bristol doesn’t regret it.
On what she took away from her two seasons on the series, she reflected, “That I can step out of my comfort zone and be more social and not be so introverted. Just put myself out there.”
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