Last summer, Dancing With the Stars fans promptly freaked out after ABC fired cohosts Tom Bergeron and Erin Andrews and replaced the duo with Tyra Banks. Although #DWTS Twitter was shocked by the announcement, it turns out Tom wasn’t as caught off guard.
In September 2021, Tom dished his thoughts on the matter to Full House star and fellow former America’s Funniest Home Videos host Bob Saget. On the podcast Bob Saget’s Here for You, Tom got real about how he’s feeling more than a year after departing the ABC dance show. From what it sounds like, in some ways, the writing was on the wall.
“In all candor, the show that I left was not the show that I loved,” Tom explained. “So, the end of the season that turned out to be my last season [in 2019], I kind of knew. So I took everything out of my dressing room that I really wanted.…It was kind of obvious that we were kind of butting heads.”
Tom later added, “I wasn’t surprised that that was my last season. So there was no blue period. Actually, I think Erin and I had more fun getting fired than anyone.”
As for what Tom disagreed with producers about, we believe it may have had something to do with the booking of former president Trump’s White House press secretary, Sean Spicer. At the time the cast was announced in the summer of 2019, Tom issued a statement claiming that he had expressed his desire to keep DWTS free of “divisive bookings from ANY party affiliations” so that the show could be a “joyful respite from our exhausting political climate.” As Tom put it, in the end, producers chose to “go in a different direction.”
Despite Tom disagreeing with the network, it sounds like fans are harboring more hard feelings at this point than he is.
“It’s pretty far in the rearview mirror for me. I’m on to other stuff.” Tom also noted, “You know what nobody needs to hear? A whiny millionaire…it’s so self-absorbed. I mean, look. I had great fortune. I mean, I had two network shows running simultaneously for the better part of a decade and a half.”
Not to mention all the friendships Tom made over the course of roughly 15 years. All in all, it sounds like Tom has moved on, which means we probably all should too.
