The final rose for Dancing with the Stars season 20 goes to Chris Soules. On Good Morning America the day after Iowa farmer Chris proposed to fertility nurse Whitney on the season 19 finale of The Bachelor, ABC officially revealed that Soules will be a contestant on the upcoming season of DWTS.
The other 11 stars and their partners were announced two weeks ago, but ABC held off on revealing Chris Soules until one week before the start of Dancing with the Stars. Soules will be partnered with defending Mirror Ball champion Witney Carson, who won last season with Alfonso Ribeiro.
DWTS Reveals First 11 Stars for Season 20>>
Soules will be the third male Bachelor to compete on DWTS and the fifth member of the Bachelor franchise as a whole. Previously dancing celebrities included Sean Lowe and Jake Pavelka as well as Melissa Rycroft and Trista Sutter. Sutter was the first person eliminated in the first season while Rycroft finished third in season 8 and then won in the All-Stars season. The two other male Bachelors both finished in the middle of the pack, Pavelka in seventh and Lowe in sixth.
The 10th anniversary of Dancing with the Stars is, surprisingly, lacking in true star power. People like Soules, Michael Sam, Charlotte McKinney and Noah Galloway have only become known (or partially known) in the past year. Others are only stars if you’re a teenage girl (Riker Lynch and Hunger Games star Willow Shields). In fact, prior to 2008 (when Nastia Liukin won her Olympic gold medal and DWTS was already in its sixth season), only Patti LaBelle and Suzanne Somers could genuinely call themselves stars.
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The DWTS season 20 line-up lacks the longevity and worthy careers of true stars. Only two of them were famous seven years ago. Compare that to season 19, when a majority of the contestants could claim careers spanning more than a decade (Alfonso Ribeiro, Tommy Chong, Lea Thompson, Michael Waltrip, Antonio Sabato, Jr., Jonathan Bennett, Betsey Johnson, Randy Couture and Tavis Smiley).
This season we’re stuck with a bunch of one-hit wonders who haven’t earned the right to call themselves stars. If all you’ve done is date a bunch of ladies, appear in one commercial, get on the cover of Men’s Health magazine, play a minor role in a film franchise, not actually play in the NFL or whatever other claim-to-fame the new cast has, then you’re not really a star. At best, the DWTS season 20 cast is made up of a bunch of red dwarfs.
Dancing with the Stars season 20 premieres Monday, March 16 at 8pm on ABC.
(Image courtesy of ABC)
Senior Writer, BuddyTV
John watches nearly every show on TV, but he specializes in sci-fi/fantasy like The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural and True Blood. However, he can also be found writing about everything from Survivor and Glee to One Tree Hill and Smallville.
