Val Chmerkovskiy says Jenna Dewan’s prior dance experience matters on Dancing with the Stars season 35, but not because it gives her an easy path. The bigger advantage, he said, is the person standing in front of him — someone he described as an incredible human being, a mother, an artist and a beautiful soul.
That view lands now because season 35 is underway, and the judges are already treating contestants with dance backgrounds as people who need to be measured more closely. Chmerkovskiy said Dewan’s talent is a huge advantage, yet the point of the partnership is watching her grow and reveal herself week by week, not simply leaning on what she already knows.
The focus on Dewan also follows a broader pattern this season, with Chmerkovskiy and Jenna Johnson both paired with celebrities who arrive with prior dance experience. Johnson said the judges are holding those partners to a little bit of a higher standard based on that experience, and she said she and Harry Shum Jr. were prepared for the criticism that comes with it. In her view, the show gives no free pass for background, even when that background can help a performance look polished from the start.
Johnson said Shum does not need to prove anything and is genuinely enthralled with ballroom. She also said he lost his love for dance because it had become too stressful and too much pressure, and that his goal this season is to find joy through dance and tell stories. That makes the scoring discussion sharper, because the same history that can give a contestant technical confidence can also create expectations that leave less room for a forgiving first impression.
Chmerkovskiy put it more bluntly: the show has exploded, and that has put it at the forefront of more conversations and more opinions. He said that is why prior experience is now part of the scorecard in a way it may not have been before. The judges can see the difference, the audience can see the difference, and the season is turning that difference into a weekly test of how much background should matter.
For Dewan, Chmerkovskiy said the most important part is not the comparison to anyone else. He joked that there is no Channing Tatum, but there is a Val Chmerkovskiy, then said the real value is bringing joy into her life while also seeing her growth and self-reveal inside the competition. That leaves the season with a clear standard and an open question: if experience is an advantage, the next few weeks will show whether the judges reward it as polish, punish it as expectation, or keep forcing both at once.
