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After 20 years as a Dancing with the Stars judge, Carrie Ann Inaba is no stranger to criticism.
As the beloved competition series celebrates two decades on the air, Inaba, 57, reflected on her journey sitting at the judging table since the show’s 2005 debut during a recent interview with Variety. While she said it is “an honor” that she has been able to dedicate her career to her passion, Inaba admitted that all the online hate she receives has taken a toll on her.
“It has definitely made me struggle with mental health,” she shared. “I’ve spoken to therapists about it. I remember when I first went to therapy about it, I said, ‘How do I approach this?’ And she’s like, ‘Well, what do you believe in?’ I said, ‘I believe in truth.’ She helped me figure out how I was going to show up, and said I should just always step into my truth each time. And so by doing that, it makes the online hate and vitriol that comes at me feel less like it can hurt me, because I’m very true to myself.”
“When you’re true to yourself, it doesn’t matter as much what everybody else is saying about you,” she continued.
Disney/Christopher Willard
Inaba further explained that she has been “targeted with this kind of negativity” since she first started out on DWTS and viewers used “chat rooms” to share their thoughts.
“It used to really affect me,” she confessed. “I remember seeing some horrible words written about me, and I was shocked, because as a dancer, you’re used to just getting the fan love. Now, as a judge, I recognize I was stepping into a whole different sphere, and I think the way I have always coped with it is that if I’m going to judge and speak my opinions freely, whether they’re popular or unpopular, I do believe I have to give the same grace to everyone else.”
She then confessed: “It does hurt. Sometimes the things they say are cruel, and that has affected me. It’s made me scared. It’s not so much that I get hurt as I get afraid, because it feels like they’re, like, attacking me verbally, so I shrink down a little during the season, especially after week five or six. That’s when it usually starts to happen.”
Being the only woman judge on the panel — which also includes Derek Hough and Bruno Tonioli — Inaba acknowledged that she takes the brunt of the backlash.
“I don’t really understand it, but I’ve come to terms with it,” she said. “Now that I’ve come to terms with it, now I can speak about it. Sometimes, I’ve looked at the scores that are given, I read the comments back and think, ‘Well, what did I do? Let me see.’”
She revealed that she even went back and looked at her scoring of Danielle Fishel and pro Pasha Pashkov, who was eliminated from the recent Nov. 4 episode of season 34, after people “blamed” Inaba for the Boy Meets World alum going home.
“My scores were not the lowest scores,” Inaba noted. “So, that’s fans passionate for Danelle, and I can see the positive in that. And if they come at me for scoring Whitney [Leavitt] and Mark Ballas well, it’s because they love Alix Earle. There’s always a positive to even the most negative comments.”
Disney/Eric McCandless
Overall, she said she always tries to take criticism into consideration. One major online narrative revolves around some believing that Inaba is harsher in her judging of women celebrities than the men — which she called “very ironic” and only “partially true.”
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“I am the woman on the panel, and I understand what it is to be a woman, so I can get into more detail about what I’m seeing,” she explained. “Because I support women so much, I let them know what I see, because they are working so hard, I always feel it’s my responsibility if I sense somebody hasn’t given it their all, because I don’t want them to walk away with regret. I’m not saying I always know right, because none of us are ever 100% right. But I’m willing to risk that, and speak to them so that they have the opportunity to grow.”
“In general, I think people are tougher on women,” Inaba added. “And what’s funny is they’re accusing me of being tougher on women while they’re being tougher on a woman.”
Dancing with the Stars airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC and Disney+.
