Brian Austin Green says Sharna Burgess is “doing great” after the pro dancer revealed she was not invited back for the upcoming season of Dancing With the Stars.
Speaking to ET’s Deidre Behar on the Fox lot in Los Angeles at the Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test season 2 event, Green assured fans that Burgess not being invited back this season is a challenge for her, but one that she will certainly overcome.
“She’s doing great. Sharna’s awesome. But it’s a difficult situation,” the Beverly Hills, 90210 star explained to ET. “There’s obviously just sort of ego challenges and things not working out the way you would like them to and all of that, but she’s a strong person.”
“I feel like the universe puts challenges in front of you to force you to have to deal with things that maybe you haven’t dealt with on your own,” he continued, “and then you’re kind of put in a situation here, it’s like — whether you want to or not — you have to deal with these things.”
It was on Green, Burgess and Randy Spelling’s new iHeart Radio podcast, Old-ish, where Burgess shared how she realized she wasn’t invited back this season.
“I wasn’t asked back to do Dancing With the Stars this year, which was definitely a huge shock to me,” she said on the premiere episode. “Last season I was supposed to come back, but Zane was only eight weeks old. I was speaking with them about it and it just felt I needed to sit in motherhood with Zane.”
Burgess and Green share a 1-year-old son, Zane, while Green is also dad to four other sons — three with his ex-wife, Megan Fox, and one with actress Vanessa Marcil. Back in August, and two months after giving birth to Zane, Burgess bowed out of season 31 and explained she just wasn’t ready to devote the time it takes to be part of the long-running dance competition series. She expanded on that on the podcast.
“It was my first baby, first experience. It was a lot,” she said. “I just wanted to not feel like I walked away from that experience and something that I would never get back with Zane. I wanted to share that time with him.”
Burgress went on to say that it was always her intention to come back the following season. She said she was adamant about that with DWTS producers, but in the weeks leading up to the cast reveal, she said she had an uneasy feeling.
“I did drop in and let them know, ‘It goes without saying but I would love to be back next season or this season,'” she said. “And then it got to the week of everyone getting their phone calls and I know when everyone got their phone calls because everyone’s talking.”
And that’s when she says he realized everyone got the call, except her.
The couple will now focus on their new podcast, as well as watching Green compete on Special Forces alongside a star-studded cast that includes Vanderpump Rules star Tom Sandoval, former NFL star Dez Bryant, the Bachelor‘s Tyler Cameron, Laker great Robert Horry and Olympic gold medalist Bode Miller, among others. According to the show’s synopsis, “the recruits will be faced with the harsh reality of winter warfare training on the mountains of New Zealand where the terrain and freezing temperatures are brutal and the tasks will feel like torture. There are no votes, and no eliminations — just survival.”
“I was curious to see what I was actually still capable of compared to what I was afraid, what I lost possibly with health things,” said Green when asked how the competition series tested him. “It’s hard to tell. When you’re coming out of stuff in your mid-40s there’s a part of you that’s like, is this difficult because I’m 45 or is this difficult because I’ve just lost this?”
And the answer? Only Green will ever know.
“I am the only one that will know those answers,” he said. “That’s for me.”
Special Forces: World’s toughest Test premieres Sept. 25 on Fox.
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