Cheryl Burke on ‘Dancing With the Stars’: “I Can Tell You That the Show Is Not Rigged”

If there’s one thing Dancing With the Stars pro Cheryl Burke wants you to know, it’s that the hit dancing competition is not rigged. The 33-year-old defended the show in a new interview with Us Weekly.

“Being a part of the show now for 20 seasons, I can tell you that the show is not rigged despite what people might think. The votes are 50/50 from the judges and the fans. That’s how this process works; the fans want to feel involved with their actual journey,” Cheryl confessed. “If it were just up to the judges, I don’t know if so many people would tune in every week. You can never assume anyone is safe even if they get a perfect score. That’s why having a strong fan base is so important.”

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To say I am proud of you, @terrellowens, would be an understatement. Week in and week out you have put in the work to improve and its been so inspirational to not only see you become a dancer but to show us all what an amazing person you are. I am so thankful that I was able to come back this season to take this journey with you and I will miss working with you every day. Thank you for an amazing season.

A post shared by Cheryl Burke (@cherylburke) on Nov 6, 2017 at 10:22pm PST

Cheryl won the Mirror Ball Trophy twice, once during Season 2 with Drew Lachey and again during Season 3 with Emmitt Smith. During Season 25, she and her celebrity partner, NFL star Terrell Owens, came in sixth place. “This year, the finale is bittersweet for me. Watching the show last week, I wished we were still in it, but we got very far and the show really did change Terrell’s life,” she said of their partnership and elimination. “I’m just so proud and honored that I could be a part of that this season with him. He is so grateful that he was part of Dancing With the Stars and it was awesome to be a part of his journey as well.”

And even though Cheryl loves being on DWTS, she admits she took a break between Seasons 20 and 22 to focus on coming back even stronger. “As a choreographer, it’s a struggle coming up with new ideas and routines that haven’t been done before. That’s one of the reasons I left the show and took a break,” she shared with the news outlet. “I needed to feel inspired again and I needed come up with new things creatively. I felt I needed to work on myself as a professional dancer so I went to Argentina for three months to train. Dancing With the Stars has been an evolution of so many different styles and I feel like in order to keep your game up, you also have to be able to work on yourself. I took enough time off to feel inspired again.”

And hopefully, we get to see how inspired she is during tonight’s finale (we’re sure she and T.O. will be making a cameo in some of the dances)! Cheryl gushed about this season, who has Lindsey Stirling and Mark Ballas, Frankie Muniz and Witney Carson, and Jordan Fisher and Lindsay Arnold in the top three. She exclaimed, “It’s been an amazing season and I can’t wait to see who will take home the mirrorball!”