Whitney Leavitt addresses claims of unfair advantage and opens up about improvement on Dancing with the Stars

Whitney Leavitt directly confronted the long-running claims that she entered Dancing with the Stars with an “unfair advantage” and spoke at length about her performance growth on the show, using her conversation on Call Her Daddy to lay out the details herself.

Her comments came during a nearly two-hour taping with host Alex Cooper, where Leavitt explained the nature of her previous training, how viewers interpreted it, and what shifted inside the ballroom as the season progressed.

She also described what improvement looked like from her perspective and from that of her partner, Mark Ballas.

The discussion marked the first time she addressed the controversy at length following her Season 34 semifinal elimination.

Whitney Leavitt on criticism and growth throughout Dancing with the Stars

The criticism surrounding Leavitt’s background surfaced early in the competition, where social media users debated whether her degree from Brigham Young University provided a competitive edge.

On Dancing with the Stars, Leavitt said the issue centered around one detail: 

“I think what people were so hung up on is my modern dance degree.”

She went on to explain exactly what that degree entails. She said, 

“Modern has like lots of shape. It's very artsy fartsy, and that’s the best way that I can describe it.”

Leavitt clarified the limits of that training, adding, 

“Dancing with a partner in this capacity is like so new to me, so different.”

When Cooper asked more directly about her weekly practice habits, Leavitt made the distinction even clearer. 

“I wasn't dancing regularly because I went to college, and then I just started having babies,” she said. “I have three kids… I wasn't actively dancing.”

Despite this, she became one of the strongest early performers of Dancing with the Stars Season 34.

But rather than strengthening her standing, early success appeared to heighten scrutiny. Leavitt said, 

“In the beginning, it was lots of love… but then I feel like the shift happened after week five.”

The claims of “unfair advantage” resurfaced throughout the season, but they also prompted Ballas — a longtime Dancing with the Stars pro — to offer context from the show’s history. He said, 

“I don't think you could tell me one season where there hasn't been someone with dance experience.” 

He listed multiple past celebrities with similar or more advanced backgrounds, including Mario Lopez, Sabrina Bryan, Nicole Scherzinger, Jordan Fisher, ice skaters, Olympic gymnasts, and others. 

“Someone’s going to have dance experience,” he noted. He also drew a line between technical training and natural stage presence: 

“She is a dynamic performer, and that's something that I can't teach.”

As the season progressed, the question shifted away from background and toward improvement. Viewers debated whether Leavitt had shown enough growth to remain competitive in the semifinals.

Both Leavitt and Ballas addressed that criticism directly. Ballas described technical progression between dances, saying, 

“If we look at the chaa one to chacha two, it's night and day between leg action, footwork, tightness in turns.”

He added that her ballroom frame in the Viennese Waltz showed “huge improvements.”

Leavitt acknowledged Ballas’s coaching style when reflecting on the process of getting better. She said, 

“He's going to push you. He's going to be hard on you because he believes that you can do that.” 

Her own sense of progress was also intertwined with weekly uncertainty. “I just wanted to soak up every single dance cuz I just didn't know when it was going to end,” she told Cooper earlier in the episode.

That uncertainty intensified after the release of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Season 3, which brought new attention to her reality-TV reputation and sparked online conversations that spilled into the ballroom.

By the semifinals, she and Ballas scored 58 out of 60 — one of the highest totals of the night — but were still eliminated.

Even then, Leavitt did not link the elimination to technique. When Cooper asked why she believed she went home, Leavitt responded, 

“Maybe Secret Lives… because it was such a huge divide. Like, you either really loved me for that or you really hated me for that.”

Ballas pointed to the show’s unpredictable voting patterns over the years. He said,

“This is not the first time that someone who is an amazing, incredible, dynamic performer has been eliminated early.”

He added that he would “hate to say it was Secret Lives,” emphasizing that votes can shift week to week without a single determining cause.

Still, both acknowledged that the online discourse surrounding Dancing with the Stars Season 34 reached an intensity neither expected.

Ballas described receiving severe hate messages, reading one aloud during the recording. Leavitt said watching a partner experience that level of harassment for the first time “in turn hurt me.”

Through the noise, Leavitt stayed focused on the parts she could control: her improvement, her partnership, and the work she put into each performance.

Despite debate over her background, she maintained that her goal was never to win but to participate fully. 

“I wanted that experience,” she said. “I would hope that anyone that had a dream… would go after it.”

By the end of the interview, both reflected on the experience with clarity. Ballas told Cooper that deliberately holding back for strategy “is not the move,” saying, “If you can do the dance and you feel good, like do your best.”

Leavitt held to the same principle — a stance that shaped her decisions before, during, and after Dancing with the Stars.

Stay tuned for more updates.