Dancing with the Stars host Tom Bergeron puts producers on blast for booking Sean Spicer

Tom Bergeron isn't dancing around how he feels about Sean Spicer's Dancing with the Stars booking.

The former White House press secretary on Wednesday was announced as one of the contestants on the dance competition show's newest season, prompting host Bergeron to release a statement expressing his disapproval. Bergeron writes that he met with the new executive producer of the ABC series a few months ago and specifically asked for the 28th season to be a "joyful respite from our exhausting political climate and free of inevitably divisive bookings from any party affiliations." Evidently, he left that meeting under the impression an agreement had been reached, but this was not to be.

"Subsequently (and rather obviously), a decision was made to, as we often say in Hollywood, 'go in a different direction,'" Bergeron writes disapprovingly.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Bergeron does go on to say that the producers and network are free to "make whatever decisions they feel are in the best long term interests of the franchise," and he'll continue to host the show, but he makes quite clear that this is a decision he strongly disagrees with.

This certainly isn't the first time Dancing with the Stars has had a guest on from the world of politics, with former Texas Gov. Rick Perry being booked on the show in 2016. Still, Spicer's booking sparked a fair amount of controversy on Wednesday, and Bergeron clearly is in agreement, putting him in the position of hosting a show with a guest he just told the world shouldn't even be there. We already got a glimpse at the potential awkwardness in store on Good Morning America on Wednesday, during which Bergeron got in a dig at Spicer's infamous post-inauguration press conference by joking he'll "be in charge of assessing audience size." Expect plenty more of that when the show returns on Sept. 16.