Heavy/ABC "Dancing With the Stars" news.
A “Dancing With the Stars” runner-up really wanted to go home early.
In a July 2024 interview, DWTS season 32 runner-up Jason Mraz admitted that he asked his friends to stop voting for him early on in the celebrity ballroom competition.
Mraz, 47, told Jesse Tyler Freguson’s “Dinner’s On Me” podcast that he was homesick, missed his cat, and pretty much freaked out when he realized he was actually doing well in the ABC dance-off last fall.
Here’s what you need to know:
Jason Mraz Was ‘Terrified’ When He Realized He Was Doing Well on ‘Dancing With the Stars’
In the interview, Mraz admitted he never expected to last long on “Dancing With the Stars.”
“I went in thinking, ‘I’ll probably last two or three weeks,’” he shared with Ferguson on the podcast. “Well, two or three weeks in, I realized I’m probably going to be here the whole time.”
A “terrified” Mraz noted, “I have to cancel all my plans for the entire rest of the year. And I’m missing my cat terribly. ”
Mraz is a huge cat lover. He previously told the Dan Diego Humane Society that cats changed his life for the better. “My cats are feet warmers, heart healers, and belly laughers,” he said in 2021. “Just saying their names calms my nervous system and cools my attitude. They mean the world to me. I try to be like them. I sit, gaze, meditate, doodle and sing for hours without care. They taught me that. I wouldn’t be where I am without having given so much time to sitting and thinking. I can thank my cats for that.”
Of his plan to return home to his beloved pets, Mraz explained, “I start telling my friends, ‘Stop voting for me!’ Because like the only way I can get off this show is if I don’t get enough votes.”
“I even told the producers, ‘I’m good. I can go home now, thank you so much for the honor,’” the “I’m Yours” singer revealed, adding, “They said, ‘We can’t do anything about you being here.’ So, the only thing I could do is ask friends to vote for someone else.”
Jason Mraz Feels Like He Won ‘Dancing with the Stars’
In November 2023, teen actress Xochitl Gomez and her partner, Val Chmerkovskiy, beat out Mraz and his partner, pro dancer Daniella Karagach for the season 32 Len Goodman Mirroball Trophy.
But on Ferguson’s podcast, Mraz joked that he could have won the competition had he “given a [expletive].” He promised if he’s ever asked to do a “Dancing with the Stars” All-Stars season he would “try really hard.”
In a November 2023 interview with the Daily Beast, Mraz admitted that he figured he would “go on the show, do a couple of dances, and hopefully one of them would be to [his] song, “I Feel Like Dancing.”
“I’ve seen the show. People get eliminated. That’s how it goes,” he said. “I thought, ‘That’s me, I can be that guy.’ I had no idea that I would connect to dance, to my body, and even to fans. I’m definitely already deeper into this than I imagined I would be.”
Mraz also admitted that the vulnerability he felt while on the show scared him. “It shocked me,” the singer told Glamour in February 2024. “It peeled off layers, it improved how I feel and view myself. I overcame certain fears.”
Mraz admitted that he both “hated” and “loved” his time on the show. “I hated the grind because I’ve been self-employed for so long. I can kind of pick and choose what I do, and in ‘Dancing With the Stars’ I had no choice,” he told the outlet.
He also admitted that he still can’t believe he made it to second place after thinking he wouldn’t last more than week or two. “I feel like a winner,” Mraz said in the interview.