Peta Murgatroyd Is Returning For ‘Dancing With The Stars’ Season 28, Husband Maksim Chmerkovskiy Seemingly Out

An interesting casting tidbit has emerged just hours before the official Season 28 Dancing with the Stars cast is announced. Fans have been busy speculating about the celebrity cast who will hit the dance floor this fall, but there’s a lot of buzz regarding which pros will be doing DWTS, too. Now, Peta Murgatroyd has revealed that she’ll be back, but it sounds as if her husband Maksim Chmerkovskiy won’t.

The 33-year-old New Zealand native first joined Dancing with the Stars as a pro in Season 13 and Peta did every season after that through Season 25, except for Season 23. She has won the mirror-ball trophy twice, with Donald Driver and Nyle DiMarco, and her most recent celebrity partner was Nick Lachey.

After a couple of seasons away, it seems that Peta is ready to return. Dancing with the Stars fans had not necessarily expected this, but she shared the news Tuesday morning with Us Weekly.

“I’m overwhelmed with excitement. I’m excited and happy to be back with my family. Honestly, I just missed everybody so much! As a lot of people know, it’s such a close and tight-knit family, so I’m just happy to be back with everybody.”

Peta and her pro dancer husband Maksim welcomed son Shai in January 2017 and the two took time away from reality television to focus on their growing family. There had been a lot of buzz in recent months that Peta might be pregnant again, or hoping to become pregnant, and thus might not return to DWTS.

However, now it seems that’s not the case, at least at the moment.

“I definitely wanted this to happen. I hoped that I could make this work for a couple of months now and was praying and hoping that it would all align. It was the perfect time for my family.”

As excited as Peta is to return to DWTS, she says that she’ll be doing it solo. Her husband Maksim is excited for her, but won’t be rejoining Dancing with the Stars for Season 28.

Granted, things can change in the final hours leading up to a casting announcement and Maksim has previously said to be out when he ended up rejoining the cast at the last minute. For now, however, it seems that Maksim will be watching rather than participating.

“I’m sure he would consider it. I think it just has to line up with what he’s doing and what I’m doing and I feel like he still wants to dance. He’s still fit and healthy!”

Dancing with the Stars spoiler fans will be curious to see how Peta’s return impacts the rest of the pro slate. As PureDWTS notes, having Peta hit the dance floor would seem to suggest that another female pro who was probably expected to dance actually won’t.

As The Inquisitr previously detailed, DWTS spoilers suggest that Lindsay Arnold and Emma Slater are definitely “in,” along with male pros Gleb Savchenko, Keo Motsepe, Sasha Farber, and Val Chmerkovskiy. In addition, it would be rather shocking if Witney Carson, Jenna Johnson, and Sharna Burgess were not a part of the cast.

Could Peta being on the cast mean that perhaps Cheryl Burke is out, perhaps by choice? If Cheryl is part of DWTS, then it seems likely there’s a shocker on the way when it comes to Sharna, Jenna, and Witney.

One way or another, everybody will find out who the rest of the celebrities and pros are on Wednesday morning. The cast is shaping up to be an interesting one and a lot of fans will be excited to see Peta Murgatroyd hitting the dance floor again as a Dancing with the Stars pro.