Carrie Ann Inaba Cries Over James Van Der Beek DWTS Elimination

Getty US television personality Carrie Ann Inaba attends the Dancing With The Stars - 2019 top 6 finalist event, November 4, 2019, in Los Angeles.

After James Van Der Beek’s shocking elimination in the “Dancing With the Stars” semifinals, Carrie Ann Inaba got emotional over her decision to send him home. James’s elimination was especially heartbreaking because it happened shortly after he revealed that he and his wife Kimberly had suffered a miscarriage of the pregnancy they announced on DWTS earlier in the season.

At the end of the semifinals, James Van Der Beek and his partner Emma Slater surprisingly found themselves at the bottom of the leaderboard heading into the week’s results. Although the couple had been frontrunners since week one of the season and had never before landed in the bottom 2, their scores sent them into the bottom two and, ultimately, led to their elimination at the hands of judges Len Goodman, Bruno Tonioli, and Carrie Ann Inaba.

When it came time for the judges to choose to save Ally or James, Carrie Ann Inaba struggled to begin. With her voice breaking, she said “This is not easy. First of all, this is not at all what I expected to see here. You both are amazing – both couples are fantastic and have proven yourselves in so many different ways.” She took a deep breath before turning to host Tom Bergeron to ask “Do I really have to?” before saying “The couple I want to save, and I’m so sorry, is Sasha and Ally.”

After the controversial elimination, Inaba discussed the season’s most challenging decision during an episode of The Talk. Visibly upset, she began by saying “As a human being, what he and his wife Kimberly suffered is heartbreaking and I have so much sadness in my heart for them. And my prayers are with them. But this is, you know, when it’s really hard. Because as a judge, I have to judge the dance. I know, on Dancing With the Stars, we show their stories and we get to know them and they become family and their pain is my pain. But, at the same time, it’s like, in the Olympics, if something happens to someone before they get on the gymnastics mat, it doesn’t matter what happens in your personal life. I have to judge what’s happening on the dance floor.”

She received applause from the audience and her co-hosts before continuing: “It was hard, I will say though. And my hearts are with them.” She then revealed that, after the live taping, “I went home and I vomited.”

James, Emma, & Their Castmates Were Tearful Throughout the ‘DWTS’ Semifinals

Before James and Emma took the stage for their Foxtrot (their second dance of the night), James revealed in a video package that he and his wife had lost the baby they were expecting. James broke down in tears in Emma’s arms at the dance, and she joined him in crying. The judges were emotional, too, and when James carried his crying daughter to the Star Lounge to get his scores alongside host Erin Andrews, there was not a dry eye in the room. His co-stars could be seen crying in the background, and Andrews struggled to find the words to say to James or his young daughter.

The tears resurfaced when, after landing in the bottom two with season frontrunner Ally Brooke, James and Emma were voted out of the competition when all three judges chose to save Ally and Sasha. The moment was indisputably the season’s most heartbreaking, not only because the judges (Carrie Ann especially) struggled with the decision they had no choice but to make, but because Ally Brooke herself begged to give her place in the finals to James so that she would be eliminated instead of him.

After the show, Brooke took to Instagram to address James once more, writing “As heartbroken as I am, I’m going to continue on for you James, and take your advice to keep shining. I’m so blessed and thankful to have met you and call you a friend. It is such an honor to know a man like you. God bless you.”

Tune in to the season 28 finale of Dancing With the Stars, Monday, November 25 at 8/7c live on ABC.