For the first time in six years, Tom Bergeron will be returning to the Dancing With the Stars ballroom on the upcoming November 11 episode. The longtime former host will be serving as a guest judge alongside Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli, and Derek Hough for a special 20th Anniversary Celebration episode.
Bergeron began hosting DWTS during Season 1 and held the position until Season 28 in the fall of 2019. Ahead of the Season 29 premiere in 2020, he revealed on social media that he had been fired.
“Just informed @DancingABC will be continuing without me,” he shared in July 2020. “It’s been an incredible 15-year run and the most unexpected gift of my career. I’m grateful for that and for the lifelong friendships made.”
Since then, more information has come out about Bergeron’s exit from the show. Scroll down for a refresh about why he was fired and more.
Why was Tom Bergeron fired from Dancing With the Stars?
Bergeron’s exit from DWTS came amid disagreements with Season 28 showrunner Andrew Llinares over the direction the show was heading. Specifically, the casting of Sean Spicer on Season 28, Bergeron’s last season, sparked tension that ultimately led to Bergeron being fired.
On the Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans podcast in 2023, Bergeron said he spoke with showrunners ahead of Season 28 and specifically mentioned that it would be best not to cast any political figures on the show, as the country was coming up on a big election year in 2020.
“I said, ‘Just nobody of any party, don’t go there,'” Bergeron explained. “Just make us the wonderful escape from all that divisiveness for two hours a week.” He said he brought up these points at separate lunches with two of the showrunners and that they both agreed with him, which is why he was shocked to learn a few weeks later that Spicer, Donald Trump‘s former press secretary, was part of the cast.
“I said, ‘Guys, this is exactly what we we said we wouldn’t do.’ And I would have responded the same way if they had booked Hillary Clinton, whom I voted for. ‘Don’t go there. This is, you know, not the right time. Play to our strengths, be the show that gives people a break from all this bulls**t.'”
Adam Larkey / © ABC / Courtesy: Everett Collection
Bergeron said he was “furious” over being lied to and even offered to take the season off, but was told that he would be let go from his contract, which went until Season 30, if he made that decision.
“I knew it was happening, and my temper kicked in, and I was at least going to let people know that they f**king lied to me,” Bergeron said, referring to the statement he released on social media after Spicer’s casting, were he publicly called out the show.
Said statement read: “A few months ago, during a lunch with DWTS‘ new Executive Producer, I offered suggestions for Season 28. Chief among them was my hope that DWTS, in its return following an unprecedented year-long hiatus, would be a joyful respite from our exhausting political climate and free of inevitably divisive bookings from ANY party affiliations. Subsequently (and rather obviously), a decision was made to, as we often say in Hollywood, ‘go in a different direction.’ It is the prerogative of the producers, in partnership with the network, to make whatever decisions they feel are in the best long term interests of the franchise. We can agree to disagree, as we do now, but ultimately it’s their call.”
Bergeron ended up hosting Season 28, but it would be his last. “In all candor, the show that I left was not the show that I loved,” he admitted on the Here for You podcast in 2021. “So at the end of the season that turned out to be my last season, I kind of knew. I took everything out of my dressing room that I really wanted.”
He also said on Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans that he didn’t regret making the public statement, confirming that he wanted fans to know that the higher ups had “screwed” him. “It wasn’t about my political beliefs,” he reiterated. “It was about my feeling about the show. What is this show at its best? And what was happening was we were suddenly becoming this show at its worst for ratings, for ratings, ratings, just for controversy.”
Bergeron admitted his final season was not a “pleasant” experience. Meanwhile, the timing ended up working out, as Bergeron previously told TV Insider that he was already planning to leave after Season 30 when his contract was up. “As circumstances played out, I left two seasons before, but those seasons [that would’ve ben my last two] were during COVID,” he pointed out. “I would have hated them. Everything I love about the show, the camaraderie, hanging out, none of that would’ve been available. I’m glad it didn’t end that way. And not surprisingly, the showrunner that I locked horns with didn’t last much longer anyway.”
Was Tom Bergeron fired because of The Masked Singer?
At the time of Bergeron’s firing, some fans speculated that his decision to appear on The Masked Singer in 2020 may have led to the show’s decision to get rid of him since the series is on a competing network. Bergeron shut down that speculation.
“Come on, get a life, really,” he said. “I was a f**king taco singing Sinatra. I’m sure that’s not a reason to fire someone.”
He again reiterated that the firing happened because the people running the show at the time didn’t like “being called a liar in public.”
Why is Tom Bergeron returning to Dancing With the Stars?
Despite the way Bergeron left the show, he has always looked back on his overall experience fondly. In 2022, the series’ original showrunner, Conrad Green, returned, which is a big reason why Bergeron wanted to come back.
Green first asked Bergeron to sit in the audience for the 500th episode in 2024, but Bergeron turned down the offer because he said he’d “get too fidgety.” Ahead of Season 34 in 2025, though, Bergeron met up with Green and “presented to him a scenario in which I would come back for one night,” he told TV Insider. Now, he’s doing just that.
“I said, ‘Look, I’m just gonna charge you scale, but I want a nice donation to the Motion Picture & Television Fund, and I come back as a guest judge,'” Bergeron dished. “If I came back and sat in the audience, I’d go crazy. I’m too fidgety and I’m sure I’d make some sort of trouble.”
He also added, “Conrad has really done a lovely job of reaching out to me and offering an olive leaf, and we’re friends, and so, in the past 12 months, when this idea popped into my head, [I thought], ‘Yeah, I think I’ll be very comfortable spending a lot more than a minute there.'”
Dancing With the Stars, Season 34, Tuesdays, 8/7c, ABC
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