INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

Cheryl Burke Slams Ian Ziering: The Mere Mention Of Her Former ‘DWTS’ Partner Makes Her ‘Want To Throw Up’

By Jennifer Ricketts
Published on: 14:44 PST, Apr 17, 2016

Cheryl Burke wasn’t happy, to say the least, about her pairing with Ian Ziering on the fourth season of Dancing with the Stars back in early 2007. As a matter of fact, the 31-year-old professional dancer said working with the 52-year-old 90210 and Sharknado star was such a nightmare that it “made me want to slit my wrists.”

TMZ posted a preview of Burke’s interview on the podcast Allegedly with Theo Von and Matt Weiss, where she spoke about the time she spent with her former dance partner, Ziering, and how much she despised that time. She told the hosts Ziering was her “least favorite” dance partner during her entire time on DWTS.

Burke also revealed she wanted to be eliminated early and even went so far as to ask the judges to cut them from the dancing competition.

“It made me want to slit my wrists. I was like, ‘Hey execs’ – I was like crying to the executives – ‘is there any way to force us, to just like eliminate us?’ They’re like we can’t. We can’t do that and I swear, every time I asked, we just kept going. We would last till the end.”

Whether she’s exaggerating the way she felt at the time or not with her wrist slitting comment, she was clearly miserable. While Burke didn’t go into specific details about anything Ziering may have done or said to cause her to despise him, she did say he had an intensity that was hard to be around, the New York Daily News reports.

People reports the hosts sympathized with her and said Ziering did seem“very intense” during his appearance on The Celebrity Apprentice last year.

“That’s the true colors that they didn’t show on Dancing with the Stars. Think of spending time with that for like 8-10 hours a day, seven days a week, for three months,” Burke told the podcast hosts.

The disdain with which Burke speaks about Ian Ziering is palpable. She confessed that merely the way Ziering’s first name is pronounced bothered her.

“The fact that his name’s not [pronounced] ‘EEE-an’ and it’s ‘EYE-an’ makes me want to throw up,” she said.

Cheryl Burke once told Wonderwall she enjoyed working with athletes the most on Dancing with the Stars.

“I get along with athletes, I think, because they know how to be coached, and they know how to be trained,” she said. “Actors or people more in the entertainment business, I feel like sometimes it’s hard for them to take direction, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s just the way that they are.”

That seemed to be the case when she worked with an athlete as her partner in season 10. In her autobiography, Dancing Lessons, she wrote about how people assumed she and her season 10 partner, former Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson, were dating due to their chemistry. According to Uproxx, she said they didn’t officially date but did have a fling.

During their season, Burke and Ziering made it to the semi-finals and finished in fourth place. At the time, she said their finish was “well-deserved.” She left DWTS after season 19 in 2014.

The full Allegedly with Theo Von and Matt Weiss podcast will be available Tuesday on iTunes.

You can catch new episodes of Dancing with the Stars on Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET, only on ABC.

What do you think about the harsh words Cheryl Burke had to say about former dancing partner Ian Ziering?

[Photo by Amanda Edwards/Getty Images]

Share this article: Cheryl Burke Slams Ian Ziering: The Mere Mention Of Her Former ‘DWTS’ Partner Makes Her ‘Want To Throw Up’
cheryl burke Dancing with the Stars Ian Ziering
More from Inquisitr