Articles by Hannah Yasharoff

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All about DWTS' Elaine Hendrix’s car accident and injury from over 30 years ago

Elaine Hendrix's Dancing with the Stars run is allowing her to defy what she previously thought was possible for herself. The actress, 54, best known for her role as Meredth Blake in The Parent Trap, originally began her performing career as a dancer, but everything changed after a car accident injury rendered those dancing dreams impossible. She pivoted to acting, but the dancing bug never quite fully went away, and now Elaine is returning to her original dream. "I have a titanium joint in my right foot, so that renders half my foot unusable," Elaine explained in the opening package before her Wicked Night performance on Tuesday. "Every week, my body shifts into a new pain spot, but I just don't want to let it stop me." Elaine moved to Los Angeles in 1992 to begin her professional career as a "classically trained dancer in modern and contemporary jazz," as she previously told HuffPost in 2016. "Very soon after moving here, I was riding my bike and got hit by a car and that changed everything for me, because after that dance became something that was very painful to do, so it just pushed me more in the direction of acting," she said. She added: "That's when I stopped dancing professionally, but I never stopped dancing altogether. It's just that whenever I dance I need to be prepared for the fact that I will be really sore and can't quite do the things I used to do. But that's okay. I believe that everything happens for a reason and it pushed me in this direction that completely worked out, thankfully." Earlier this season, Elaine opened up about how those injuries continue to linger as she's pushing herself to compete on the reality ballroom dance competition. "It's a roller coaster because I have very real injuries," she told People. "So I have good days, and I have challenging days. The thing that we focus on is to do whatever I need to do to make sure show day is a good day." Wicked Night was certainly a good day in the DWTS judges' eyes. Elaine's standout contemporary performance with pro partner Alan Bersten to "Defying Gravity," the most well-known song from Wicked, was a unanimous hit. All four judges — Wicked director Jon M. Chu joined Carrie Ann Inaba, Derek Hough and Bruno Tonioli at the judges' table Tuesday night as a guest judge — awarded Elaine a 9/10, adding up to a total of 36/40, tying for second place on the Wicked Night leaderboard. "I just burst into tears just because you were so purely in this moment," Carrie Ann said following the performance. "There are these moments that happen on this show that are magical — that no one will ever forget how it made them feel. ... It was beauty, elegance and you just dug into my soul and I am so proud of you.” "I'm so grateful," Elaine said after receiving her scores. "I'm so grateful for this moment. I am 54, I am injured and I just did that!"

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DWTS' Scott Hoying opens up about the 'weird freak accident' on Wicked Night that led to elimination

Pentatonix singer Scott Hoying's bid for the Len Goodman Mirrorball Trophy came to an end Tuesday night on Dancing with the Stars. Now, Scott is opening up about his "emotionally difficult" journey on the show, and why he "blacked out" right before the Wicked Night performance that would ultimately get him voted off the show. Dancing to "The Wizard and I" from Wicked with his pro partner, Rylee Arnold, Scott went into the evening very confident, but found that his nerves quickly got the best of him, he shared during an appearance on Thursday's episode of the Dancing with the Stars Official Podcast. "It was this weird freak accident," Scott said of the performance, which garnered a 28/40 score from the judges (7s across the board from Carrie Ann Inaba, Derek Hough, Bruno Tonioli and guest judge Jon M. Chu). "We were doing the number, I had done it a million times, drilled it, and then I just blanked. I missed a move and then I could not recover. So I was just kind of moving my body and watching Rylee and trying to get back on. ... I don't know what it was. My brain just didn't fire. No thoughts in my head and I was suddenly very aware I was out there. It was like, 'I'm out here on the dance floor and I don't know what I'm doing.' It really flustered me. But hopefully it didn't read too badly." He continued: "I'm obviously really heartbroken because I'm just disappointed because I know I could do better. But anxiety just gets the most of you out there and some people can handle it and some people can't. I really went out there confident and felt really good about this dance, but I just blacked out and didn't kill it. I feel bad for Rylee because she worked so hard, but I'm proud of what we did and I'm happy that it happened." It was a huge realization, Scott added, to notice that he can be such a confident performer as a singer, but then feel so differently about performing on the dance floor. "I've had people say to me, 'you don't even seem like yourself. You're so nervous.' It's so different," he continued. "And it's a beautiful thing in a way, because it was bringing up insecurities from my childhood, like I was shyer than normal. ... This was so different. It felt vulnerable in a way that I have not been in years. And I think that's what was so great about it. It threw me so far out of my comfort zone, it shook me. It was life-changing. I just feel stronger because of it." Before beginning his DWTS experience, others had warned Scott about the intense hours of rehearsing. But the singer said he wasn't prepared for the competition to be intense in other ways, too. "I didn't expect it to be such a rollercoaster emotionally," he said. "Physically, it was really hard, and I was feeling amazing one day at rehearsal and then I'm like all of a sudden crying. It was really intense in that way. I didn't expect that." All of the ballroom styles Scott and Rylee did during their run on the show were "tougher than I expected," Scott added. "When you watch it on TV, everyone makes it look so effortless. You're like, 'I can do that. I can dance.' But no, there are so many layers. ... I was expecting not to be as anxious. It was really, really hard." Despite his run on the show coming to an end, Scott said he's leaving with only positive feelings and plans to continue hanging out with Rylee all the time. "The first feeling really is gratitude," he said. "I love this show and I really wanted to be on it. It's such a big season and Rylee and I got along instantly and we got to do 6 weeks of it. So I feel like I really got to experience it. ... It was really special and I made lifelong friends on the show."