Whitney Leavitt and her Dancing With the Stars partner, Mark Ballas, performed their would-be freestyle even after their shocking semi-finals elimination — using Broadway themes to seemingly address online hate and bullying.
Leavitt, 32, and Ballas, 39, debuted their show-stopping routine on the Wednesday, November 26, episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. In the number, the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star and Ballas wore matching bedazzled suits as they danced to a jazzy version of “My Way.” As the lights turned red and the music waving in the SLOMW theme song, they were surrounded by a group of dancers wearing all-black with ski caps, holding iPhones as flashlights. They flung Leavitt in the air and she collapsed on the ground.
The dance then became a horror movie, with Leavitt — a trickle of fake blood running down her mouth — getting up while the dancers recorded her on their phones. There was the sound of a lightning strike and they backed away. Then Ballas ran toward her, picked her up and gracefully twirled her around the dance floor. The light, at that point, had turned blue and the music soft and somber as the “My Way” melody returned, heavy on the piano and violin. A sign that read, “Social Media Is Bad for Your Mental Health” flashed in the background.
The song then turned upbeat, inciting more jazz-hands, with Leavitt and Ballas defiantly kicking their feet and doing the final twirl that they never got to show — definitely going out with a bang.
Hours earlier, host Alex Cooper teased Leavitt and Ballas’ performance would be something completely new for her podcast.
“We’re doing something I have never done in the history of this show,” Cooper, 31, said in a social media teaser. “Whitney Leavitt, welcome to ‘Call Her Daddy.’”
In addition to performing their freestyle on the podcast, the duo also spoke about their DWTS journey.
“They’re relentless,” Ballas said in the teaser footage, seemingly referring to the show’s fans. “They’ve just taken it out of me.”
As for Leavitt, she added, “And then it just exploded — and then it just went south for what?”
Leavitt and Ballas were frontrunners throughout the entirety of DWTS season 34 this fall, overcoming obstacles like a now-canceled fan giveaway for tickets and the aftermath of her Mormon Wives comments. (During season 3 of the Hulu hit, Leavitt revealed that she only returned to the show and MomTok as a way to audition for DWTS.)
Leavitt and Ballas made it all the way to the semi-finals, where they were eliminated after performing two leaderboard-topping routines to Prince’s biggest hits.
“When you’re cast on Dancing With the Stars, you are seeing these people [for] hours every single day. Then it just stops. It genuinely feels like a breakup,” Leavitt said in a TikTok video shared earlier this month. “Leavitt It feels like I’m going through withdrawals right now. “Today just felt so weird. It felt so weird not going into the studio and meeting with Mark and learning a dance. It just felt weird and it made me sad.”
While Leavitt was upset to no longer be in the competition, she was also upset because she learned a lot about herself during the experience.
“You learn so much about yourself, and people have uplifted you constantly, and you challenge yourself like you just feel so loved,” the influencer said at the time. “It’s so important to surround yourself with people who believe in you, who want to see you achieve your delusional dreams, as cheesy as that sounds. Mark is that friend to me. I will forever be so grateful for that friendship.”
She concluded, “I loved every bit of [the experience], but the one thing that I have loved the most that I wasn’t expecting was getting a lifelong friend. A friend who makes fart noises every single day. I’m just so grateful. I love you guys, I f***ing love this show.”
Leavitt was among the eliminated DWTS contestants to return for the Tuesday, November 25, finale, where she performed in the opening number and a pre-commercial bumper. In the end, Robert Irwin and his pro partner, Witney Carson, were crowned the season 34 winners.
Dancing With the Stars airs on ABC Tuesdays at 8 p.m. EDT, and streams the next day on Hulu.
