6 Celebrities Who Hated Being on ‘Dancing with the Stars’

“I had no idea it would be so bad. I got told off by my dancer.”

When celebrities hit the ballroom floor on Dancing with the Stars, they make their complicated routines look effortless — but behind the scenes, things don’t always go as smoothly. In fact, there are a handful of stars who really didn’t enjoy their time on the show and look back on the experience not so fondly. Even celebs who made it far in the competition admit they hated being on the show. Whether they didn’t get along with their partners or just expected things to go differently, these stars have regrets about joining DWTS.

Find out what happened to these celebs on DWTS…

Kim Kardashian

Kim Kardashian admits that she should have known that DWTS wasn’t for her from the beginning. Looking back during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Kim admitted that she had no dance experience and any moves she did have were often made fun of by her sisters. After being eliminated from the show, Kim shared that she was “traumatized” by the experience and never wanted to dance again.

Actor Milo Manheim, who appeared on DWTS years later, also shared that Kim told him it was an overall bad experience.

“She doesn’t like dancing as much as I do, and I was like, ‘I’m about to do Dancing With the Stars, tell me, how was your experience?’ And she was like, ‘Milo, it’s the worst! Like, you get injured, you feel like an idiot,’” he shared with Entertainment Tonight.

Mischa Barton

Mischa Barton’s experience on DWTS didn’t end up being what she expected. The actress explained that she was told she was going to get more creative control but that didn’t happen — and on top of that, she didn’t really get along with her partner, Artem Chigvintsev.

“Ugh, I had no idea it would be so bad. I got told off by my dancer. I was supposed to control the costumes, I was told that I could do the design aspect of it, that’s kind of the reason why I agreed to do it,” she told The Ringer.

She continued, “That didn’t happen. It wasn’t collaborative like a choreographer on a film set…I was so confused by it. It was like The Hunger Games. It was all a popularity contest. It was awful. I was so glad to get kicked off.”

Anna Delvy

Anna Delvey may have gotten along with her partner Ezra Sosa but she admits she didn’t love her experience on the show. In fact, when she was eliminated, she infamously said she was going to take “nothing” away from her time dancing. When she later reflected on her experience on DWTS, Anna said she believes she was exploited by the show.

“I feel that the show so obviously used me to drive up the ratings, that they never had any plans to give me any chance to grow and only cared about exploiting me for attention. It was predatory of them to try [to] make me feel inadequate and stupid all while I did get progressively better yet they chose to disregard that,” she told NBC News.

Zendaya

Zendaya made it all the way to second place on DWTS but she didn’t love her time on the show. On multiple occasions, Zendaya has spoken out about how it was a stressful experience that she didn’t enjoy. Even a decade later, she admits she’s “still harboring a little animosity” about losing and wishes she hadn’t taken it so seriously.

“I felt that loss. I was only 16 years old, and it was highly stressful,” she told W Magazine in 2025. “Being on live television every week? It’s so scary. I wish I’d enjoyed it a little bit more and just was like, ‘Eh, whatever.’ You know what I mean? But I was stressing myself out. I really went through it on that.”

Jana Kramer

Jana Kramer is no stranger to reality television but admits that DWTS wasn’t her favorite show. Looking back, Jana says she was really insecure because she didn’t know how to dance and she much preferred her time on The Masked Singer.

“I hated Dancing with the Stars because that was a big insecurity because I don’t know how to dance,” she shared on her Unmask and Unwhine podcast. “With [The Masked Singer], it’s, like, you have a mask on, go have fun…I shouldn’t say I hated Dancing with the Stars. It was my least favorite of the shows.”

Hope Solo

Hope Solo had a bad experience on DWTS because of her pro partner. After the show wrapped, the soccer star alleged in her autobiography, Solo: A Memoir of Hope, that her partner Maksim had been very aggressive with her during rehearsals.

“He was often nasty, swearing at me and being harshly critical. He manhandled me in rehearsals from the start, pushing me, whacking my stomach, bending my arms roughly. 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,” Hope wrote in her book.

In response, Maksim issued his statement on the Allegedly with Theo Von & Matthew Cole Weiss podcast, calling Hope a “s—-y person” and adding, “People can be bad or good or whatever. You can have a s—-y life growing up. You can have a tough upbringing. You can have history. You can have whatever. But, if you are just a bad person, you know what I mean? There’s no excuse for that.”