Brooks Nader and Gleb Savchenko continued to show off their strong chemistry on Dancing With the Stars.
In a video package aired before their routine on the Tuesday, September 24, episode of the ABC series, Nader, 27, leaned in and seemingly pecked Savchenko, 41, while rehearsing their quickstep to Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5.” Carrie Ann Inaba quipped in her judging comments that she wanted to see them kiss in the routine, after which Savchenko told Us Weekly he leaned over to Nader to question whether they really did.
“I didn’t watch the package,” he exclusively told Us after Tuesday’s episode. “And I said to Brooks, ‘Don’t watch the package,’ because I don’t want her to get frustrated, like, messed up or something.”
Nader, for her part, weighed in on the steamy rehearsal moment by explaining, “I kiss everyone I know. All my friends. I love to kiss, so, like, don’t take it to heart. Don’t take offense. It’s just a peck.”
Savchenko agreed, noting, “She loves to kiss.”
The pair’s upbeat performance earned them a score of 20 points out of 30, bringing their total for the first two weeks to 38 points. They avoided the night’s double elimination, which sent home couples Tori Spelling and Pasha Pashkov and Anna Delvey and Ezra Sosa.
“I wasn’t not happy with it,” Nader told Us of their quickstep results. “I’m, like, a total perfectionist. I love high scores. But I’m really happy with our performance because we worked really hard this week. So, I think it showed on the dance floor.”
Among their feedback from the judges, Derek Hough pointed out that they used a tango frame instead of a quickstep one throughout their dance. “I actually appreciate that he said that because we worked on it,” Savchenko told Us. “And because the first dance was the tango, the second dance was a quickstep. It’s a different hold. And, you know, I should have paid more attention to it. My bad.”
Savchenko played up his and Nader’s teacher/student dynamic in their routine by portraying a strict ballet teacher. If not working as a dance coach on and off the small screen, Savchenko told Us his dream “9 to 5” job would be to hit the big screen.
“I’d be an actor, like, an A-list actor,” he shared. “Like [a] George Clooney type of an actor, or Brad Pitt.”
Nader, meanwhile, said she would work in the medical field if she weren’t a supermodel. “Somebody told me the other day — this is going to sound so silly — that I would be a really good hospice nurse because they’re like, ‘I would like to talk to you when I’m dying,’” she explained. “I’d be like, ‘It’s fine. We’ve got this. Who cares about death? It’s so easy.’”
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.
With reporting by Carly Konsker
