I am formally asking the viewing public to forgive a man whose only crime was passionately invoking a televised assault to secure a better rumba score.
I was taking a late breakfast at the Polo Lounge with a mid-tier streamer executive when my phone lit up with the news we had all been praying for: Val Chmerkovskiy was finally coming back to the ballroom. The relief at our table was palpable. For seven agonizing days, the Dancing with the Stars community had been plunged into darkness, forced to endure an entire week of televised routines without the comforting presence of a man who had recently suggested a judge might deserve to be violently struck across the face on live television.
We need to talk about the absolute hypocrisy of the discourse surrounding Val’s so-called suspension. Let us review the facts of the case. During a critique of his wife Jenna Johnson’s routine, judge Carrie Ann Inaba had the audacity to suggest her frame was slightly loose. In response, Val simply made a passionate, off-the-cuff reference to Will Smith’s Academy Awards slap, heavily implying that Carrie Ann might be subjected to a similar battery if she did not watch her mouth. In any other era of Hollywood, this would be celebrated as the height of chivalry. Today, it gets you a one-week timeout from the samba.
His triumphant return on Tuesday’s Horror Movie Night episode was nothing short of a generational comeback narrative. I watched the rollout closely, analyzing the tracking data with my own reps, and I can tell you that the bravery required to step back onto that polished mahogany floor after being held accountable for your own words is immense. The sheer courage it takes to put on a sequined mesh shirt and do the tango while knowing that the woman you vaguely threatened with assault is sitting twenty feet away, still holding a paddle with a seven on it, is the stuff of legend.
The real villain here, if we are being honest with ourselves, is Carrie Ann Inaba. When you sit at that judges desk, you accept the risks of the industry. You know that if you critique a professional dancer’s wife’s posture, you are practically begging to be compared to Chris Rock in the seconds before a career-defining physical altercation. What did she expect? A respectful disagreement? A polite nod? This is network television. If you aren't prepared to have an open-handed strike invoked in defense of a mediocre quickstep, you simply do not belong in the business.
I reached out to my contacts at the network to see how the inner sanctum was handling this grave injustice.
The fact that Val was forced to sit at home for an entire week just because he passionately mapped out a hypothetical assault scenario is a chilling violation of his creative process.
Tristan is entirely correct. We are living in an era where the red carpet is rolled out for everyone except the artists willing to bleed for their craft, or, at the very least, willing to make someone else bleed for their craft. I have sat on panels at SXSW about this exact phenomenon. We demand authenticity from our reality television stars, yet the moment one of them authentically channels the spirit of a disgraced A-lister to intimidate a 56-year-old dance choreographer, the network's legal team suddenly gets cold feet.
Consider the psychological toll of a one-week suspension. For seven days, Val was entirely cut off from the spray-tanning booth. He was denied access to the sequin vault. He had to watch from his living room as other couples executed entirely un-threatened lifts. A source close to the production told me over a matcha latte that Val spent the entire hiatus pacing his foyer, physically unable to stop doing the Paso Doble, haunted by the realization that he could not even vaguely gesture toward a felony battery charge on national television.
Furthermore, let us examine the Oscars slap itself. Has it not become an essential part of the modern entertainment lexicon? When my publicist is negotiating a first-look deal and the studio tries to lowball my backend points, my lawyer absolutely references the Will Smith slap. It is a standard negotiating tactic. Give us the gross points, or we are going to walk up to the podium and defend Jada. Everyone laughs, the deal gets signed, and we all go to Nobu. Val was simply utilizing an industry-standard metaphor to secure a better score for Jenna. To penalize him for speaking the language of the trade is frankly anti-labor.
It reveals a glaring double standard in how we treat the box office versus reality television. If an A-list director yells at a grip until the man weeps, we give him a vanity slate at Warner Bros. But a dancer passionately implies a judge might get smacked on live television, and suddenly we are treating him like a pariah. It is absurd. The ballroom is a crucible. If you cannot handle the heat of a vaguely homicidal cha-cha, you should be judging The Great British Baking Show, where the only thing being aggressively pulverized is a shortcrust pastry.
Tuesday night proved that the audience is starving for real stakes. Val Chmerkovskiy did not just return to the ballroom; he returned to his rightful place as the premier defender of his wife’s heel-leads. And if Carrie Ann Inaba knows what is good for her, she will keep her critiques strictly to the music, lest she find out exactly how much torque a trained salsa dancer can put into an open-handed swing.