Val Chmerkovskiy might be suspended from Dancing With the Stars this week, but he’ll be returning for Halloween night, and things could be awkward between him and Carrie Ann Inaba.
Val’s suspension was the result of an “Oscar Slap” joke he directed at Carrie Ann after her criticism of Jenna Johnson’s dance last week. And apparently there’s still tension between the pair.
“Carrie Ann did not initially accept Val’s apology when he called to say he was sorry,” a source tells The Sun. “She heard him out but never said things were fully good between them.”
The insider adds that producers “never want anyone on set, let alone a woman who has been on the show since day one, to feel uncomfortable. Other pros have left or had to sit out for whatever reason, but to be suspended by producers is a first. How does one come back from that? The show is still figuring that out.”
A source previously told The Sun that “producers on the show encouraged [Val] to save face by making an apology to her. He doubled down on the joke at first, and once the backlash got as loud as it did, he had a talking-to and did it to save his job.”
Meanwhile, Carrie Ann “doesn’t know how to move forward after this. She stands by what she said to Jenna; she was being constructive. Making that kind of joke was a shock to Carrie Ann.”