Tavis Smiley blasts ‘Dancing with the Stars’ producers

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This week, media personality Tavis Smiley was voted off of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars, but he’s not leaving the competition gracefully.

“Our competitors on this show had 35 to 40 hours to rehearse, and I had a book tour,” Smiley said in an interview with Good Morning America. “The most we could do were 8 or 10 hours a week. You cannot perfect the cha cha in eight or 10 hours – I don’t care who you are; you can’t do that.”

In an interview with People magazine, Smiley later blasted DWTS producers for casting him on the show when they were aware of his hectic book tour schedule.

“Producers shouldn’t sign up people who can’t commit the time when they are told up front that the person is going to be on a book tour,” Smiley told People immediately after the show. “We gave them the entire book-tour schedule in advance! This is not about sour grapes. It’s about saying I think the fans deserve to have stars on this show who have the time to commit to learning the dances so [partner Sharna Burgess] and other professionals don’t waste their time trying to do something that’s just humanly impossible.”

Smiley wasn’t finished there.

“I asked for the spring,” he said. “With all due respect to the producers, when they came after me, I said to them specifically I’m going to be on a book tour in September. Everybody on this show will tell you it’s harder than it looks. You have to spend time perfecting. I’ve been a talk show host for 20-something years and I’m still getting better at it. But you can’t perfect this in eight or 10 weeks.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OcbnGEdtuY

Follow theGrio.com’s Entertainment Editor Chris Witherspoon on Twitter @WitherspoonC.