Reading time: 2 minutes
He’s coming home, friends.
Five years after his departure from Dancing with the Stars, original host Tom Bergeron returns as a guest judge for the show’s 20th anniversary special, scheduled to air Tuesday, Nov. 11.
“It feels really good,” Bergeron said Tuesday on Good Morning America about his return. “I’m really looking forward to it.”
We guess time really can heal all wounds, right?
ABC fired Bergeron in 2020.
He broke the news of his own firing on Twitter, saying that producers had told him at the time that he would not help host season 29 of Dancing with the Stars.
“Just reported that @DancingABC will continue without me,” Bergeron wrote, taking the high road and adding:
“It has been an incredible 15 years and the most unexpected gift of my career. I am grateful for that and for the lifelong friendships I forged.
“That being said, what am I supposed to do now with all these glitter masks?”
Bergeron had previously criticized former White House press secretary Sean Spicer for being cast on Dancing with the Stars, thinking that someone who misled the country so horribly should never have been given that platform.
As a guest on Cheryl Burke’s podcast, Sex, Lies and Spray Tans in 2023, Bergeron expressed his disappointment for this dismissal.
“I get a phone call,” he said in that episode about how he found out about Spicer.
“And they go through the list of who’s going to be on the show, and this former showrunner tells me, ‘You might want to sit down for this last one.’ And then they told me who it was, Trump’s former journalist. I said, ‘Guys, this is exactly what we said we wouldn’t do.’ Don’t go there. This isn’t the right time, play to our strengths, be the show that gives people a break from all this nonsense…
“And that really made me angry.”
In 2020, co-host Erin Andrews also left the show and Tyra Banks followed her as the next host.
It seems fitting all this time after Bergeron joins fellow judges Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli and Derek Hough, as Dancing With the Stars celebrates two decades on the air with its 34th season.
The show, based on the British show Strictly Come Dancing, first began airing on ABC in June 2005.
