Not every joke lands, especially on live TV. An especially awkward moment happened recently when Dancing With the Stars host Tyra Banks made a comment that prompted some shade from head judge Len Goodman.
It all went down during the Disney+ series’ Halloween night after Charli D’Amelio and her dance partner Mark Ballas listened to judges Len, Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli and Derek Hough’s commentary on their Argentine tango. Moved by the performance, Len said that the dance transported him to a club in Argentina.
Around the episode’s 19:30 mark, Tyra interrupted: “I heard the audience make a sound when Len said he was transported to a club in Argentina,” as she jokingly made bass noises and pumped her arm up to demonstrate. “What you talking about a club?” she asked.
Len turned to Derek in confusion and replied, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” as he raised his hands in exasperation.
Catching up on #DWTS and Len being done with Tyra is killing me because me too LMFAO
— haley (@meteor_meatier)
Some Dancing With the Stars fans immediately noticed Len’s reply and stormed to Twitter to call out the cringe-y moment. “Catching up on #DWTS and Len being done with Tyra is killing me, because, me too. LMFAO,” one person tweeted. “Rumor has it, Len still doesn’t get Tyra’s joke #DWTS,” a different user wrote.
Though the exchange struck Len and fans alike as odd, Bruno backed Tyra up by saying he knew what she was talking about. “I’d go clubbing with you right now,” he chimed in.
Once Tyra sent Charli and Mark to the skybox to hear their scores, she rushed over to Len to explain. “When you said ‘club’, they laughed,” she said while miming the dance again. Len simply responded, “Oh, I see.”
It’s not the first time Tyra’s hosting has prompted some strong reactions on Twitter. Over the course of season 31, she’s gotten called out on the internet for mistakes she’s made, including mispronouncing people’s names. However, like Bruno, the DWTS cast has spoken up for her, including the judges and dancing pros Val Chmerkovsky, Emma Slater and more.
And despite all the criticism she’s received since joining the show in season 29, Tyra told US Weekly back in 2020 that she’s keeping her head up.
“Every host messes up. It’s just normal. It’s live TV. If it wasn’t live, there would be no mess-ups,” Tyra said to the outlet. “Even on America’s Next Top Model, I would mess up and tell my editors to leave it in. That’s what makes things human.”
Tyra went on: “If I didn’t want to mess up, if I wanted to be perfect, I know how to do that. There’s a very clear way as a host that you just read the words and you’re perfect and you know exactly how to do that. But when you’re relaxed and you keep it real, the mess-ups happen. And the producer in me knows that even though somebody might be like, ‘Oh, my gosh, you’re messing up!’ it’s live, and it’s real. It’s better than being like a doll.”