Dancing with the Stars Season 34 recently premiered, sparking questions from both longtime and new viewers. Many fans commonly ask why the network fired Tom Bergeron. Bergeron hosted DWTS from 2005 to 2019, and the network dismissed him from the dance competition show in 2020. Although fans already know he was fired, many still wonder about the reason behind it.
So why did Dancing with the Stars fire Tom Bergeron? Here’s Tom Bergeron’s DWTS firing explained.
Here’s why Tom Bergeron was fired from Dancing with the Stars
Tom Bergeron opposed the show’s casting of Sean Spicer, Donald Trump‘s former White House Press Secretary. As a result, the show fired Bergeron from Dancing with the Stars.
Bergeron opened up about his firing in a 2023 appearance on Cheryl Burke’s Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans podcast. He revealed it all started in summer 2019, when he had lunch with DWTS’s showrunner and the showrunner’s boss.
The former Hollywood Squares host shared that he urged them not to cast any political figures on the show due to the divisive political climate at the time. He explained he wanted the show to be a “wonderful escape from all that divisiveness for two hours a week” (via The Hollywood Reporter). Bergeron then discussed the call he got two weeks after the meetings. During that call, he learned that the producers had cast Sean Spicer despite their discussions.
“And I said, ‘Guys, this is exactly what we said we wouldn’t do!,” Bergeron recalled. He added that he would have responded the same way if they cast Hilary Clinton, whom he voted for president. Bergeron was furious about the producers’ decision, so much so that he offered to step away for a season. However, the producers countered with an offer to release him from his contract.
“It really pissed me off … my temper kicked in,” he shared. “I was at least going to let people know that they f—— lied to me.” Notably, Bergeron had written a statement on X (formerly Twitter) in 2019, criticizing Dancing with the Stars’ casting of Sean Spicer.
Bergeron discussed his statement, emphasizing that he did not name political figures. He said they threw him a “curveball,” but concluded the producers were entitled to do what they did. “We will have to agree to disagree,” he stated, adding that he already knew his current season would be his last.
Previously, in a 2020 interview with reporters at ABC’s VirtuFall panel, executive producer Andrew Llinares stated that Bergeron and Erin Andrews’ firing was due to the show’s “evolution” (via US Weekly).
