NEW YORK – Robert Irwin is both a “Dancing with the Stars” champion and a wildlife conservationist. Faced with a “Would you rather?” of dancing a jive on live TV or dealing with a crocodile death roll, Irwin responds in an instant.
“I’ll take the crocodile any day,” Irwin, 22, tells USA TODAY while promoting ABC’s new series “Dancing with the Stars: The Next Pro” (premiering Monday, July 13, at 8 p.m. ET), which he is hosting. “You know [crocodiles] are going to try and kill you every time, but you don’t know what’s going to happen out there on that floor.”
A death roll is a “powerful and violent twisting that wrenches limbs from sockets and muscle from bone” when a crocodile “clamps onto a morsel and does its best impression of a washer on spin cycle,” according to a 2019 Scientific American article. During a May 4 appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” Irwin revealed he dealt with the maneuver during an encounter with a crocodile he named after the late-night host.
Irwin, who appears on “The Next Pro” alongside judges Mark Ballas and his mother Shirley Ballas, and a rotating cast of guests, does find a common thread between zoo-keeping and ballroom dancing.
(From left) Judges Mark Ballas, Shirley Ballas and guest judge Derek Hough with host Robert Irwin during the first episode of “Dancing with the Stars: The Next Pro” (Mondays, 8 p.m. ET, ABC).
“This idea of putting your body on the line for stuff that you really love and that you’re passionate about and working hard, that I think really helped,” he says of his transition into the ballroom and now, ballroom hosting. “But also the importance of passion is everything. Dancing and wildlife conservation couldn’t be more different, but the people that you find in both of these professions are exactly the same.”
“And for me, being in a room full of incredibly passionate people, that’s how I grew up,” he continues. “And that’s what made me who I am today. My family, my dad particularly, are the most passionate people I know. And to have that on ‘Dancing with the Stars: The Next Pro,’ to be full of rooms where it’s people that are passionate, that are positive, that are lifting each other up and that are all working towards this goal, it’s really meaningful.”
Robert Irwin goes from dancer to mentor on ‘DWTS: The Next Pro’
On “The Next Pro,” 12 up-and-coming dancers, some of whom have links to the likes of Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lopez, compete in an intense audition process. The winner of the competition lands a spot as a pro on Season 35 of “Dancing with the Stars,” airing this fall.
Irwin, who won the Len Goodman Mirrorball Champion trophy in Season 34 with pro partner Witney Carson, jokes that he enjoyed hosting and not having to come under scrutiny from the judges.
“I know what it’s like to have an incredible pro teaching you,” he says, referring to Carson as the “greatest of all time.”
“I felt like a mentor. I felt like I could come in and tell all of these hopefuls how to teach, how to be there for your partner and what I would want in them if I was dancing with one of them.”
Irwin could also relate to watching the mother-son duo of Shirley and Mark Ballas working together on set, as he has filmed his family’s TV shows with his mother Terri in addition to working with her at Australia Zoo. (His father Steve died in 2006; Irwin was just two years old.)
“The Next Pro” host says that watching the Ballas duo’s work was “really beautiful to watch.” Shirley is a championship-winning dancer who earned the nickname “the Queen of Latin.” She’s the head judge on the BBC competition “Strictly Come Dancing.”
“When you see them come together arguing and bickering and being like, ‘No, that’s not right,’ you realize these are the two titans of this industry that are so invested and so passionate about these next pro hopefuls,” he says of Shirley and Mark. “They are so invested on every footstep, every move, because these judges know what it is to land this job. It’s the biggest thing you’ll ever get as a dancer.”
Contributing: KiMi Robinson, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Robert Irwin on ‘Dancing with the Stars: The Next Pro,’ spinoff host
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