Dancing With the Stars pro Ezra Sosa thinks his partner, Anna Delvey, wasn’t ready to put her dancing shoes away just yet.
“When we were eliminated, I could tell from the jump just staring at her face, she was a little upset about it,” Sosa, 23, told Entertainment Weekly on Thursday, September 26. “So I was like, ‘She’s going to go off on [cohost] Julianne [Hough], I can see it happening.’ But when she said, ‘Nothing,’ I was like, ‘I’ll take it, this is good.’ It was so iconic though.”
Sosa and Delvey, 33, were sent home during the ABC reality show’s week 2 double elimination, alongside Tori Spelling and her partner, Pasha Pashkov. While saying their parting words, Delvey raised eyebrows when she proclaimed she learned “nothing” from her time on the show.
“She learned something!” Sosa told the outlet on Thursday. “It honestly didn’t [hurt my feelings when] she said that. I was like, ‘Facts, queen.'”
Sosa gushed that he’s “feeling really good” about his experience on DWTS, despite his early elimination during his first season as a pro dancer.
“I’m very happy with my last dance with Anna,” he said. “I really do think she improved ever since her first week so I’m glad — even though it’s cut short. I think the most heartbreaking thing for me was that I wasn’t able to give her a better experience, because I think she had a really hard time on the show. But all in all, I think her exit was so iconic, and I’m just glad to be a part of it.”
Delvey’s stint on DWTS was controversial from the beginning due to her past. Delvey was arrested in 2018, remaining in prison through her sentencing the next year. She served two years after being convicted on charges of grand larceny, second-degree larceny and theft of services. In 2022, she was released from prison after paying $10,000 bail and placed on house arrest.
After her departure from the show, Delvey accused DWTS of using her “to drive up the ratings,” claiming “they never had any plans to give me any chance to grow and only cared about exploiting me for attention.”
“It was predatory of them to try [to] make me feel inadequate and stupid, all while I did get progressively better, yet they chose to disregard that,” Delvey told NBC News on Thursday.
Delvey alleged that she was “never really given a fair chance by the viewers or some of the judges, given their nonsensical scoring.” (Delvey and Sosa earned a combined judges score of 18 during their premiere night Cha Cha, and 17 the following week for their Quickstep.)
Dancing With the Stars airs simultaneously on ABC and Disney+ Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET. Episodes are available to stream on Hulu and Disney+ the next day.
