Charity Lawson opened up about the mental health struggles she faced during her time on Dancing With the Stars season 32.
“While Dancing With the Stars was great, I literally went through hell and back with my mental health on that show,” Lawson, 28, said on the Monday, July 29, episode of Cheryl Burke’s “Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans” podcast.
Lawson went in thinking the hardest part would be the “physical” aspects of dancing. However, she confessed that the opportunity took a toll on her “mentally” and “emotionally.”
The former Bachelorette revealed she was approached by DWTS while her season of the dating show was airing in 2023. While Lawson knew the opportunity was a “once in a lifetime” chance, she wasn’t sure if she was going to accept it because her relationship with fiancé Dotun Olubeko was new.
“Before I started all this, I was very hesitant because I didn’t know if I was going to be able to handle [it.] Dotun was obviously my biggest supporter and he was like, ‘Yeah do it, I’m going to be there with you every step of the way,’” she explained. “But little did I know, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Week three or four, I was like, ‘I don’t know.’”
While on the show, Lawson struggled with the same criticism she received every week from the judges. The panel, which included Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli and Derek Hough, challenged Lawson to give more emotion in her dances with partner Artem Chigvintsev. However, Lawson wasn’t sure how exactly to do that given her lack of background in performing.
“I got so in my head of just trying to do these little things I knew for myself. It’s almost like a clock countdown and each week I’m running out of time and I’m not doing enough,” she reflected. “And that was so soul-crushing for me to tell myself and even having those thoughts in my head of like, ‘I’m not doing enough’ when I knew I was giving it my all of what I was capable of and what the resources I had to work with at the time.”
In addition to the tough responses from the judges, Lawson revealed she was also struggling with bullying from DWTS fans. Lawson knew from being on reality TV to expect criticism from people online, but she didn’t think the DWTS viewers would refer to her as “conceited,” “entitled” or the “biggest bitch on the cast.”
“It was so damaging night in and night out … It was awful,” she recalled. “I talked about it with Artem but nobody [else] knew. The pros didn’t know, nobody knew what was going on until I was like, ‘Go look at my comments whenever I post or something about me and Artem is shared on the Dancing With the Stars page.’”
The online feedback got so bad for Lawson that she had to block and filter her personal social media page, but the official DWTS account didn’t have the comments filtered and the negativity continued. Lawson shared that towards the end of the season, she decided to turn to Chigvintsev, 42, about it and he was “confused” by the response online. Lawson claimed that they went to the shows’ executives about it, but at that point, the situation was “too far gone.” The bullying didn’t stop, and Lawson continued to turn to Chigvintsev, who “offered as much support as he could.”
“I just had to suppress it,” she said on Monday. “And it honestly got to the point where I was just trying to survive, I’m just trying to make it out of the season.”
Lawson ended up making it to the DWTS finale and came in fourth place. Xochitl Gomez and Valentin Chmerkovskiy ultimately took home the mirrorball.
While Lawson did not speak out about her struggles while on the show when it was airing last year, she decided to come forward about the bullying in an effort to “advocate” for future contestants so they won’t have to go through a similar situation.
