Brooke Burke Explains Why She Was Nearly Tempted to Have an ‘Affair’ with Derek Hough During Winning DWTS Season

Brooke Burke talks about her winning 2008 Dancing with the stars the partnership with Derek Hough went from tense to “magical”.

Burke, 52, discussed her experience with Hough, 38, on the latest episode of Fellow DWTS podcast alum Cheryl Burke Sex, lies and spray tanning.

When the pair first met, Brooke told Cheryl, 39, “I just thought [Derek] was so young, green and confident. I had no idea he would be such a powerful, dangerous choreographer.”

Over the course of the season, due in large part to a series of “valuable” couples’ therapies arranged by the producers when the partners didn’t “get along,” Brooke admits that she ended up “falling for Derek.”

At the time, the host was married to actor David Charvet (whom she eventually split from in 2018), but she told Cheryl, “if I wasn’t married … I’d actually hope we’d have an affair.”

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As Brooke admitted, “I don’t think I’ve ever said that,” Cheryl revealed that Hough was also talking about “how hot” his partner was backstage at the time.

“I’d have an affair with him,” Brooke repeated, adding, “But listen, let me tell you why: You’re intertwined with someone’s body when you’re not a dancer. There’s no way I’ve ever been more connected—except to a lover or a husband—than I am was with Derek. And every day. So you’re in someone’s arms for three months. Why do you think people fall in love? You smell them, you feel them, you breathe them. It can be more intimate than making love in the bedroom—if you make love in on the dance floor, you feel more connected. If you have energy, you dance this dance and in rhythm, and there is trust, then you share fear, you do something you have never done. How many times have you had an experience with someone where they are all you have?”

She summed up that she had “only had one experience with one such person [outside the ballroom]. Which is life-changing.”

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Before Hough – who is now married to a former colleague DWTS pro Hayley Erbert — cemented his sizzling on-screen relationship with Brooke, though the duo struggled mightily to find their groove as partners. (“”He was really hard, he was really hard on me. I’m fine with tough love. He didn’t love me through routines and support me and tell me it was amazing. He was brutally honest,” she said, admitting that she eventually made that approach “better”.)

Seeing the discord, even her then-husband encouraged her to get closer: “David said, ‘You’ve got to go and talk to Derek, you’ve got to get out of your craziness, you’ve got to go bond before the show.’ Because we were completely unrelated. We were in our own world, yet we were a partnership, we were a team… [but] we didn’t act like teammates.”

Among the “problems off camera and in rehearsals,” she explained, Hough, then just 23, “was exhausted, recording an album at night. I had a three-month-old baby. I was burned out — up all night, training all day … so my body was, like, exhausted. I was also hormonal.”

She explained: “I was a wife and a mother. I felt like he was a young man. It’s just, we weren’t meeting in a place that worked for us. So we went to this therapy session with a life coach. And I was surprised it never aired. because I thought it was super real and super valuable.”

According to Brooke, the advice she and her partner received was, “You have to get to know each other with honesty.”

For Brooke, that meant, “She wanted me to be able to say, ‘I’m exhausted, I don’t have the energy to be here, my baby cried all night, my family misses me, I’m — –terrified, I don’t know this routine, you’re mean, I’m not OK!’ Because when you’re honest with someone… there’s something incredible that happens when you meet someone with truth and honesty.”

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Brooke continued, “The other thing she said that was really valuable was, ‘You guys are not in this to win.’ And we weren’t, Cheryl. He was very scared and unsure. He just thought, ‘Let’s stay here as long as we can. We won’t to win the Mirrorball trophy.'”

Cheryl asked if the pair had ever had that conversation out loud, and Brooke said they hadn’t – but confirmed: “I knew his young mind. I knew he wasn’t competing to win. I knew it was an opportunity for both of us – He was I was there to get to know America in a different way. I think he was there because it was a great performance as a dancer, it was big for him. I don’t think people sign up for Dancing with the stars to win the Mirrorball Trophy — it’s not even possible, you think it’s not possible. So she told us, ‘You’re both here, and you’re committed to being here, you might as well fucking walk in to win.’ And we were like, ‘Oh.'”

Brooke Burke says she and ex David Charvet ‘will always have a great relationship’

She was injured around the same time, suffering a ruptured hamstring and a strained hamstring. “I was able to get away because I had an injury,” she recalled. “I’m done. I just wanted to go back to what was easy. I was literally taking Epsom salt baths in the morning getting ready to go to rehearsal. I’d come home at night, cry in the shower because I was in pain. It hurt and I had no faith in your body.”

But her husband chimed in again: “David told me — he was amazing and I’ll never forget it — he said, ‘You’ve got to pull yourself together. What kind of message would that send to the kids? You’re not going to stop. Are you giving up?'”

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With those words of advice in mind, Brooke recalled a “meeting of the minds” in which she and her partner “committed and promised to meet each other with honesty and compassion… As soon as we changed our mindset and as soon as we entered to win it and as soon as we met with honesty, something magical happened and we found faith in each other – at least I did – and we just decided to win.”

Not only did Brooke and Hough — who has now taken a seat at the judges’ table — win season seven of the ABC dance competition, she also landed a gig co-hosting the show alongside Tom Bergeron from 2010-2013.

Burke said Good morning America 2019 that winning the Mirrorball Trophy is “one of the most amazing moments of my life”.

Brooke Burke ready to rest and relax after ‘DWTS’ win

But before the glamor and offbeat quips, she had to earn her stripes backstage. “People don’t realize there’s a whole series of events going on behind the scenes Dancing with the stars it’s going to break you, and they’re going to— with your mind, they’re going to get into your insecurities, they’re going to shake you,” Brooke told Cheryl honestly. “And if you’re lucky, you make it out the other side of those moments.”

Reflecting on her progress with Hough, Brooke admits that she “learned how to face my fears and I learned how to overcome them.”

She noted, “One of the greatest feelings was winning — but it was also completing the experience and giving it my all, everything I had. And I was really proud of it. Even if I didn’t win, I was really proud of . .. devoted three months, seven days a week So I left [that competition] saying: ‘I can do anything!'”

She confirmed: “I’m so happy that I was able to go the distance, and it wasn’t about winning. I’m happy that I was able to face challenges and show the other side of them and learn, learn how to communicate, learn how to appear in front of a partner, learn how to show up for yourself, learn how to have faith in your own body and movement, learn how to tune out the noise around you and be instantly scared the f— out of me.”

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Hough ended up winning the competition six times before becoming a judge in 2020 alongside Bruno Tonioli, Carrie Ann Inaba and the late head judge Len Goodman, who died in April.

Derek’s sister Julianne is currently hosting season 32 with Alfonso Ribeiro when Dancing with the stars airs Tuesdays at 8:00 PM ET on ABC and Disney+.

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Source: HIS Education