During this crazy, hectic period, my relationship with Adrian was growing stronger every week. He came down from Seattle every Sunday and stayed until Thursday. He shopped and cooked for us and bolstered my confidence. I realized that for so many years, we had been performing our own strange dance—back and forth, pushing away and pulling back. But we finally seemed to be in synch.
In the middle of all this insanity, the ESPN Body issue came out, which meant a round of publicity and a trip to New York for the preview party. I brought Maks with me. I was happy with the cover but upset that the hose photo was included inside. There wasn’t much we could do about it but ask that they refuse to release it to news outlets as a publicity shot.
Every week, I thought I would be eliminated from DWTS, because we were often in the bottom two of the results. I was frustrated, but then I started to hear from some of the more veteran DWTS crew, who told me that being among the last couples to find out our results didn’t necessarily mean we were in the bottom two of voting. They even say before the announcement, “While not necessarily the bottom two, one of these couples will be eliminated.” I was told I kept being placed there because I was good for ratings. The producers were dragging out the drama.
The lack of transparency on the show was frustrating. I started out thinking I was in a competition, but the longer I lasted, the more I realized that it wasn’t really a competition—it was an orchestrated reality show with a preconceived plot line. Maks wasn’t my coach or teammate—he and I were just characters on a television show. But I wasn’t sticking to the script—I said what I thought and showed my emotions on camera. I was in tears several times, frustrated and tired.
It was obvious that Maks and I were put together so that we would butt heads. Right from the start, the casting producer wanted to see me hold my own against Maks, thinking that would make a good storyline. As the weeks wore on, the compilation footage of our rehearsals that was shown on the show grew more and more negative. Everything we did was on film, and the producers had hours and hours of footage every week—much of it with us laughing and getting along—but they chose to only show us bickering. In the footage, Maks looked like an arrogant ass; I looked like a drama queen. I guess it made for good TV. But there were some things even DWTS wouldn’t show.
VI.
The week we did our rumba, Maks argued with the judges, who hadn’t liked our performance. When one judge, Len Goodman, said he’d been in this business for fifty years, Maks snapped, “Maybe it’s time to get out.”
Another judge, Carrie Ann Inaba, scolded Maks. “Don’t be disrespectful.”
When it was time for our scores that week, Maks made things worse by declaring on camera, “This is my show.” I didn’t know what to say. I was caught in some ongoing DWTS feud that had started long before I signed on.
Maks later told me that he had argued with the judges because he had been told we were going to be eliminated, that there was some secret memo going around that said who would be ousted each week. He explained that he wanted to cause some drama on the live portion of the show so that they wouldn’t be able to resist keeping us around, hoping for more fireworks. It seems to have worked—we weren’t eliminated that week.
Maks was hard on me in many ways, and our contentious relationship wasn’t just a producer’s idea of good TV. He was often nasty, swearing at me and being harshly critical, telling me that I looked like a dude and walked as though I had balls between my legs. I didn’t like being treated like that, but I could take it.
He manhandled me in rehearsals from the start, pushing me, whacking my stomach, bending my arms roughly. I thought that was just how it went—how dancers worked with each other. I was tough; I could take it.
But it kept getting worse. One day, Maks was trying to put me in a certain position and hit my stomach so hard with his open palm that I had a red handprint there for the rest of the day. When I told Adrian, he was livid. Adrian had seen his mother abused when he was a child, and men being physically violent with women was something he couldn’t tolerate. But I felt so reliant on Maks that I defended him and minimized his behavior. I viewed him as my coach, and I’d had asshole coaches before. I could tough it out.
The day after Maks’s outburst supposedly saved us for another week, we had a team rehearsal: there were six couples left, and we were split into two teams. Maks and I were teamed with Ricki Lake and Derek Hough and Rob Kardashian and Cheryl Burke. In rehearsal, Maks was rough and mean with me, flinging and pushing me around. I could see the shocked looks on the faces of the other dancers. So maybe this isn’t normal behavior, I thought. Maks could also see their concern—he stormed out, while I tried to hold it together. Derek stepped in and worked with me the rest of the day.
We kept rehearsing our solo dance for the Halloween show: the samba to Warren
