Cheryl Burke Says She Felt ‘Abandoned’ by ‘DWTS’ Costars After Leaving the Show

Cheryl Burke has a complicated relationship with Dancing With the Stars after 17 years of working as a pro dancer on the show. During an appearance on Sharna Burgess, Brian Austin Green, and Randy Spelling‘s Old-Ish podcast, Burke opened up about how tough it’s been to lose friendships with people she worked with on the show for so long.

“What really hurts is when your old costars and co-workers do interviews about you,” she admitted. Burgess, who is also no longer on the show after she stopped getting asked back following the birth of her son, didn’t seem to have as harsh of a take. She played devil’s advocate a bit, telling her friend, “We’ve all known each other for so long and we call it a family and it really is, and there’s sometimes friction with family.”

However, Burke said she no longer felt that kind of relationship with others who work on the show. “That’s the sadness, though. It was never a family, I guess, for me,” she explained. “Because family … they don’t do that. They don’t abandon you when times are hard, but also when you decide to leave. What happened to the family? A strong family is more than ‘I love you.’ Family is you’re stuck together. Blood is thicker than water type of thing. And that was the realization that was so painful, I think.”

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After her voluntary exit from DWTS in 2022, Burke began hosting the Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans podcast where she discussed the show. She often received backlash for her seemingly negative takes, although she’s insisted that her words were often taken out of context.

“When people label you as this negative person who just talks s**t about the show, it’s kind of like you’re never going to change their mind,” she told Burgess. “I do feel like it’s natural [that] people tend to gravitate towards the negative and that’s it. Whether it’s people that work there and what they think of this podcast … I can never force anybody to listen to it for them to get [all] the information. They’re going to think what they’re going to think and I have to be OK with it.”

Burke didn’t address anyone by name in her latest interview. In October 2024, Maksim Chmerkovskiy was one of the former co-stars who slammed her for the Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans podcast, though. “I think that Cheryl needs to sit back and reflect on her stuff instead of starting a podcast that is so vile and so dirty and so negative,” he said on Behind the Velvet Rope. “I think Cheryl needs to do a lot of soul searching and a lot of discovery. You’re not going to discover yourself sitting in the puddle of old s**t. You’re not gonna move on. And she hasn’t.”

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In December 2024, Burke announced that she was saying “farewell” to the podcast “for now.” After thanking her loyal listeners in her announcement, she addressed those who criticized the work she’d done. “To anyone who may have misinterpreted this podcast or questioned my love for the show that shaped me, I encourage you to listen to the episodes,” she wrote. “My heart has always been in the right place, and I’ve seen so many of your comments affirming that. I will never forget where I came from, and my love for that chapter of my life will never waver. Any negative perceptions about me in the headlines could not be further from the truth. This podcast was always about truth, connection, and storytelling—not taking anything down.”