Jackson Olson is taking his viral act from the baseball diamond to the ballroom. The Savannah Bananas player was announced Tuesday as the latest celebrity cast member for Dancing With the Stars season 35 during Disney's Upfront presentation, a booking the show introduced with its own flourish: "This banana is hitting the ballroom! 🍌🕺"
The official DWTS Instagram page also told fans to "Catch @jacksonolson_ on the new season of #DWTS, this fall on ABC, Disney+, and Hulu." Olson, 28, was joined in the season 35 lineup by Love Island’s Maura Higgins and Summer House star Ciara Miller, who had been revealed earlier.
For Olson, the casting landed as a personal milestone that fit the kind of unlikely path that has made him a viral internet sensation. Speaking Wednesday on Good Morning America, he said he had "manifested" the chance to join the show. "When I was a kid, I never thought any of this was possible, even like, playing for the Bananas or anything like that," he said. "I was a shy kid that never danced, never put myself out there, never entertained and found a passion for it."
His comments pointed to how far he has come from the kid he described on television. Olson said he had even posted a couple of TikToks last year joking about joining the show and pranking his coach that he was going to be on the cast. The social-media jokes now look a lot less like a bit and a lot more like a preview.
The news also pulled Maggie Sajak, 31, into the spotlight. The daughter of former Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak backed Olson on Instagram Story on Tuesday, writing, "SO PROUD @jacksonolson_ !!!" and later, "Beyond proud of you @jacksonolson_...the dance floor better get ready," after the casting announcement.
Sajak and Olson had already gone public with their relationship by sharing a photo together at Disneyland, a hard launch that drew notice because the two live very different lives on opposite sides of the country. Olson said on May 1 that the distance has not kept them from making the relationship work. "I feel like in any relationship, you’re trying to figure out how to see each other as frequently as possible, which is never something that I thought in my past I was going to want to do … but now I really do," he said. "It’s just about planning and making sure you’re setting aside time to see each other and make really cool experiences happen because a start of a relationship never happens again. You only get one chance at a start of a relationship."
The season 35 cast is still coming into focus, but Olson's addition is one of the clearest signs yet that the show is leaning into personalities who already travel well on social platforms. His turn on Dancing With the Stars arrives this fall, and the challenge now is simple: whether the Bananas entertainer can turn a running joke, and a very public romance, into real ballroom momentum.
