- Dancing with the Stars pro Val Chmerkovskiy will be missing from the ballroom Tuesday night after being handed a one-episode suspension.
- Chmerkovskiy was suspended over a comment he made in response to a critique about his wife, fellow pro dancer Jenna Johnson, and her partner Harry Shum, Jr.
- After Carrie Ann Inaba’s critique of a lift in their performance, Chmerkovskiy posted a TikTok saying viewers “almost saw Fresh Prince enter the ballroom,” a statement many took as a reference to Will Smith's infamous Oscars slap.
- Chmerkovskiy later apologized to Inaba publicly and privately. In an October 17 Instagram Story, he said he “made a poor decision to reference a meme to ‘keep my wife's name’ out of the conversation, without stopping to think through what else that reference could imply, which was genuinely never my intention.”
- He was given a one-week suspension by BBC Studios, the production company behind DWTS, becoming the first pro dancer to be suspended in the show’s history.
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