Carrie Ann Inaba says a new lift rule should be created for next season of Dancing With the Stars after the Super Bowl Night dispute that put Jenna Johnson and Harry Shum Jr. at the center of the conversation. The judge wrote on Oct. 25 that the show needs a cleaner rulebook after calling out the pair for using a lift in their Oct. 13 routine.
That is why Johnson’s name is back in the search results now. On Oct. 27, after the Halloween episode, she said she would love a clearer lift policy and added that it would help all of the pros. She was not pushing back at the idea of rules. She was asking for them to be easier to understand.
Inaba went further than a simple complaint. She said she thought all of the dancers and judges should sit in a room together and talk through the history of the lift rule, including how and why Len Goodman, the original producers and she defined it in the first place. Her point was direct: the rule exists for safety and fairness, and the show has changed enough that the old framework may no longer be enough.
She also said the series has evolved tremendously, its casting has changed, and the audience has changed with it. That matters because the dispute was never just about one move. It became a question of how a live TV competition decides what counts as a lift when the performers, the routines and even the audience’s expectations are all different from what they were when the rule was first set.
The confusion lingered because the criticism landed on a routine that featured Harry Shum Jr., while some fans read the moment as if the lifted performer, not the move itself, was being judged. Johnson and Inaba later buried the hatchet before the Halloween Night episode, and Shum Jr. and Johnson even received a perfect score for their spooky routine with Shirley Ballas guest-judging. But the perfect score did not settle the larger issue; it only made the rule debate more visible.
The broader cast shake-up only sharpened that feeling. Val Chmerkovskiy had already received a one-week suspension after an unsavory TikTok reference to the infamous Oscars moment between Will Smith and Chris Rock, which sent The Rookie star to move and groove with Alan Bersten for Dedication Night. Against that backdrop, Inaba’s call for a new lift rule reads less like a passing comment and more like an attempt to reset expectations before the next season begins.
Johnson’s response suggests the pros are ready for that reset. Inaba has now said she wants a better understanding between the dancers, the judges and the audience, and Johnson agreed that clearer guidance would help everyone. Whether the show actually rewrites the rule is still the unanswered part, but the path forward is already visible: if next season brings another lift controversy, it will be harder for the show to blame confusion instead of fixing the rule.
