As “Dancing With the Stars” begins its thirty third season, the favored ABC dance competition show faced heavy criticism from fans on Wednesday when it announced that con artist and “infamous ankle bracelet fashionista” Anna Delvey can be among the many celebrity contestants.
Delvey's participation within the show was announced Wednesday on ABC's “Good Morning America.” She will join the likes of former NBA star Dwight Howard, troubled “Beverly Hills, 90210” star Tori Spelling and Jenn Tran, the leading lady of “The Bachelorette,” whose season resulted in heartbreak just Tuesday night. Associated Press reportedEach of the 13 celebrity contestants will face skilled ballroom dancers to compete for the famous mirror ball trophy.
But Delvey, whose real name is Anna Sorokin, generated loads of headlines and discussion on social media following the announcement of season 33 on Wednesday. Fans called her participation within the show a “disgrace” as she is a convicted con artist who pretended to be a wealthy German heiress to trick various Manhattanites into giving her lots of of hundreds of dollars in money, goods and services. Delvey, whose exploits inspired the hit Netflix show “Inventing Anna,” is currently under house arrest after she Posting a bail of $10,000. She wears the aforementioned electronic ankle bracelet for GPS monitoring while she fights against her deportation to Germany.
But as people wondered how low “DWTS” will sink to get publicity, they might have forgotten that Delvey isn’t the primary controversial figure to compete on the favored family-friendly show, normally to realize positive publicity and a likelihood to revive their public image. as Us Weekly reportedThe show seems to enjoy courting controversy every few years, often under the guise of constructing a dramatic redemption story around a problematic celebrity.
“Dancing With the Stars” was also within the news this past week due to the arrest of one in every of its longtime skilled dancers. Artem Chigvintsev was arrested last week in Napa County on suspicion of domestic violence and will not be scheduled to look on the show this season. He met his wife, former WWE star Nikki Garcia, when she was competing on the show and he was her skilled partner.
As for “DWTS” controversial contestants, the trend began with Season 5 in 2007, when skilled boxer Floyd Mayweather was invited to compete on the show despite his history of domestic violence, Us Weekly reported.
Two years later, not everyone was completely satisfied when former GOP politician Tom DeLay, House Majority Leader from 2003 to 2005, joined the show's ninth season in 2009, Us Weekly also reported. Four years earlier, DeLay had been charged with conspiracy to violate the Political Fundraising Act, which led to his resignation, but his 2011 conviction was later overturned.
Celebrity chef Paula Deen, who was caught using racial slurs and fired from her job at Food Network, attempted to redeem herself throughout the show's twenty first season in 2015, based on Us Weekly. The following 12 months, Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte faced audience protests attributable to his scandal on the Rio Olympics when he admitted to falsely claiming to have been robbed at gunpoint.
Politics again caused bad feelings amongst fans and ABC employees when Sean Spicer, Donald Trump's former press secretary, joined the show's twenty eighth season in 2019, Us Weekly reported. An ABC worker told CNN that Spicer's appearance on the show was “a slap in the face to those of us who have had to deal with his nonsense and the consequences of the ongoing White House campaign of lies and disinformation.”
In the next season in 2020, animal activist and Big Cat CEO Carole Baskin was given a platform on the show, despite being accused of complicity in her husband's disappearance within the hit 2020 Netflix true-crime docuseries “Tiger King,” Us Weekly reported.
In season 30 in 2021, YouTube star Olivia Jade Giannulli sought her own type of “DWTS” redemption after her wealthy Hollywood parents, television actress Lori Loughlin and designer Mossimo Giannulli, were embroiled in the faculty admissions scandal. Giannulli's parents pleaded guilty to paying a $500,000 bribe to fraudulently gain her and her sister admission to the University of Southern California.
“Your presence on the dance floor is an affront to honest decency,” one woman tweeted in response to one in every of Gianulli's appearances on the show.
Such comments now follow the news that Delvey will appear on “Dancing With the Stars.” Delvey is definitely the name the con artist, born Anna Sorokin, used when she posed as an heiress with a multimillion-dollar trust fund to realize access to the upper echelons of New York's high society. The Associated Press reported.
Sorokin, who became Delvey, was convicted in 2019 in reference to forging checks and financial documents to fund a lavish lifestyle. She defrauded banks, hotels and individuals of an estimated total of $275,000, AP and other media reported. She was sentenced to 4 to 12 years in prison, although she was given credit for greater than 500 days of the sentence while her case was pending, and was released in February 2021 for good behavior, AP reported. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested her a couple of weeks later for failing to depart the country, and she or he remained in custody for a 12 months until she was released under house arrest.
“DWTS” appears to be leaning into her infamous fame by having her pose as Anna Delvey for the show. The Associated Press reported. In its press release, the show also described her as a “notorious ankle bracelet fashionista” and published an image of her wearing a brief, sparkly dress with the ankle bracelet on her leg.
According to AP, ICE has not responded to requests for comment on changes to Delvey's house arrest conditions that will allow her to film the show within the Los Angeles area. Delvey told the Hollywood Reporter She was persuaded to look on the show and received permission from ICE to accomplish that.
“I was kind of talked into it,” Delvey told the Hollywood Reporter. “I got permission from ICE and then it was kind of too late to back out.” She also said she doesn't expect her ankle bracelet to affect her performance. “It's actually pretty light,” she said.
Delvey's spokeswoman Juda Engelmayer confirmed to AP on Tuesday that under current house arrest conditions, she will be able to travel inside a 70-mile radius of her home and anywhere within the five boroughs of New York City, but she couldn’t comment on any changes to those rules.
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