On tonight’s episode of Dancing With the Stars, Idina Menzel stepped in as a guest judge for Len Goodman and also gave a beautiful performance. In addition, other stars appeared on the show to add to the entertainment for “Broadway Night.” Former DWTS pro Mark Ballas has become a cast member of the musical “Jersey Boys” and he kicked off the show as part of Derek Hough and Marilu Henner’s performance. Singer Leona Lewis also appeared to add her vocals to the show tonight.
In addition to individual performances, the contestants had to get together in pairs for “team-up challenges.” With six contestants left, the competition has been getting steep and next week is the semi-finals. Which contestant had to say goodbye tonight? The couple sent home was … Marilu Henner and Derek Hough.
Paired up for the team challenges tonight were James Hinchcliffe against Calvin Johnson, Marilu Henner versus Terra Jole and Jana Kramer with Laurie Hernandez.
While voters have kept Marilu Henner and Derek Hough on the show for weeks, tonight they finally had to say goodbye. And, Henner handled it with grace. In the past couple of weeks, she has had a lot of missteps and mistakes. But, tonight was one of her best nights, performance-wise. So, at least she got to go out with a bang.
Following Henner’s exit, Derek Hough posted the following photo and message on Instagram, writing:
So very proud of this woman!!!! It was an absolute pleasure. And you went out with a bang my beautiful @therealmarilu :)
Check it out in the below photo.
In the bottom two, along with Marilu Henner tonight, was Jana Kramer with pro partner Gleb Savchenko. This was a surprise to many.
With so many missteps recently and an unflattering rehearsal package last week, it’s no wonder that Hough and Henner didn’t get the votes to make it through. Hough expressed his disappointment over the video package on the show, telling TV Guide:
In all of my years on Dancing with the Stars, I’ve never been involved in a scandal or anything overly dramatic. I can now say that’s no longer the case — ladies and gentlemen, we have “push-gate”! In all seriousness, I was pretty disappointed with our package. Marilu and I actually sat down last week and had a heart-to-heart about what actually happened during our team dance, how we both felt about it and how we felt about each other. Unfortunately, none of that was used in our package this week so I feel like the audience was shortchanged a little bit and instead was fed footage that looked tense and uncomfortable.
Do you think it was Henner and Hough’s time to go tonight?