Louis van Amstel is speaking out. After Lacey Schwimmer and Cheryl Burke recounted the body shaming they faced back in 2008 while on Dancing With the Stars, van Amstel addressed the situation in a video posted to Instagram.
It all started when, on Burke’s Sex, Lies and Spray Tans podcast, she and Schwimmer recalled comments Maksim Chmerkovskiy and van Amstel allegedly made during an interview.
“People look at this show to be inspired and think, ‘If I just work hard enough, I can look like that,'” van Amstel allegedly said at the time of the two women. “… They watch someone who’s dancing her butt off and she’s still heavy, they can be discouraged. You have to take responsibility.”
Schwimmer said that her co-worker’s comments “ruined” her, but van Amstel insisted that he never said anything of the kind and claimed that the journalist who published the quotes in question “already apologized to me because she twisted my words.”
“I never even spoke about Lacey or Cheryl or their weight. I really feel bad for them that they were made to feel so bad by that journalism, but I am here to tell you on the health of my sons, my family, I never said anything about their weight,” he said. “I love Cheryl Burke. Lacey, we never really connected, but I would never shame her on her body.”
“I apologize to you that you were made to feel bad by that piece, it was just not ever coming from my mouth,” van Amstel continued. “I respect you as a dancer and you were great on Dancing With the Stars. I really don’t know what else to say. I never said those words. If I did, I would’ve owned up to it.”
Van Amstel concluded, “And here’s to anyone that feels shamed by their body, I am the number one person that would stand up for you. This is what I base my whole entire company on, is helping others, making others feel better about themselves. Again, last time, and I’m never going to talk about it ever again, I never said anything about Lacey or Cheryl’s weight. Thank you.”
As for Chmerkovskiy’s reaction to the situation, a source told ET that he “already publicly apologized on Cheryl’s podcast” for saying that Burke and Schwimmer needed “to do something” about their weight.
“However, Cheryl still brought it up to Lacey during this recent podcast only a month later,” the source said. “It doesn’t feel fair to rehash this situation. He already apologized to her face. Feels like it was below the belt.”
For her part, Schwimmer said she doesn’t blame either of the men for the comments they allegedly made, noting that their remarks were the product of a wider ethos in the dance community as a whole and “a different time.”
“The dance community prior to 10 years, I would say, has been very backwards in that thinking that a healthy body is a very thin one where you can see the bones in their chest or the back muscles, you can see every tendon,” she explained. “And, to me, that is not healthy. That is just awful. It is not realistic, it is not sustainable.”
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