As “Dancing With the Stars” launches its 33rd season, the beloved ABC dance competition show faced fan backlash Wednesday for announcing that con artist and “notorious ankle bracelet fashionista” Anna Delvey would be included in its lineup of celebrity contestants.
Delvey’s participation in the show was announced Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America;” she’ll join the likes of former NBA star Dwight Howard, troubled “Beverly Hills, 90210” star Tori Spelling and Jenn Tran, “The Bachelorette” lead whose season ended in heartbreak just Tuesday night, Associated Press reported. Each of the 13 celebrity contestants will pair up with professional ballroom dancers to compete for the famed mirror-ball trophy.
But Delvey, whose real name is Anna Sorokin, sparked many of the headlines and social media chatter following Wednesday’s Season 33 announcement, with fans calling her participation in the show “a disgrace” because of the fact that she’s convicted fraudster who faked being a wealthy German heiress to con various Manhattanites into giving her hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, goods and services. Delvey, whose exploits inspired the hit Netflix show, “Inventing Anna,” is currently on house arrest after posting a $10,000 bond. She wears the aforementioned electronic ankle bracelet for GPS monitoring as she fights her deportation to Germany.
But as people questioned how low “DWTS” will go to attract publicity, they may have forgotten that Delvey is not the first controversial personality to compete on the beloved family-friendly show, usually in order to win favorable publicity and the chance to rehabilitate their public image, as Us Weekly reported. The show seems to like to stir up controversy every few years, often under the guise of building a dramatic redemption narrative around a problematic celebrity.
“Dancing With the Stars” also has been in the news over the past week, due to the arrest of one of its long-time professional dancers. Artem Chigvintsev was arrested last week week in Napa County on suspicion of domestic violence and is not scheduled to be on the show this season. His met his wife, former WWE star Nikki Garcia, when she competed on the show and he was professional partner.
As for controversial “DWTS” contestants, the trend began with Season 5 in 2007, when pro boxer Floyd Mayweather was invited to compete on the show, despite his history of domestic violence, Us Weekly reported.
Two years later, not everyone was happy when former GOP politician, Tom DeLay, the House majority leader from 2003 to 2005, competed on the show during Season 9 in 2009, Us Weekly also reported. Four years earlier, DeLay had been been indicted on charges of conspiring to violate political fundraising law, leading to his resignation. His 2011 conviction, however, was later overturned.
Celebrity chef Paula Deen, who had been caught using racial slurs and fired from her Food Network job, tried to redeem herself during the show’s 21st season in 2015, Us Weekly said. The following year, Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte faced protests from audience members, due to his scandal at the Rio Olympics, when he admitted to falsely claiming to be robbed at gunpoint.
Politics again created bad feelings among fans and ABC employees when Sean Spicer, Donald Trump’s former press secretary, competed on the show during Season 28 in 2019, Us Weekly reported. One ABC employee told CNN that Spicer’s appearance on the show was “a slap in the face to those of us who had to deal with his baloney and the consequences of the ongoing lies and disinformation campaign at the White House.”
The following season in 2020, animal activist and Big Cat CEO Carole Baskin was given a platform on the show, despite the fact that she had been accused of complicity in her husband’s disappearance in the hit 2020 Netflix true-crime documentary series “Tiger King,” Us Weekly reported.
On Season 30 in 2021, YouTube star Olivia Jade Giannulli sought her own form of “DWTS” redemption after her wealthy Hollywood parents, TV actor Lori Loughlin and designer Mossimo Giannulli, were implicated in the college admissions scandal. Giannulli’s parents pleaded guilty to paying $500,000 in bribes to have her and her sister fraudulently admitted to University of Southern California.
“Her presence on the dance floor is an affront to honest decency,” one woman tweeted in response to one of Giannulli’s performances on the show.
Such comments are now following the news that Delvey will appear on “Dancing With the Stars.” Delvey actually is the name that the fraudster, born Anna Sorokin, used when she posed as an heiress with a multimillion-dollar trust fund to gain access to the upper echelons of New York high society, the Associated Press reported.
Sorokin-turned-Delvey was convicted in 2019 connection with falsifying checks and financial documents to fund a lavish lifestyle, defrauding banks, hotels and individuals out of an estimated total of $275,000, AP and other outlets reported. She was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison, though she was credited with more than 500 days time served while her case was pending and released on good behavior in February 2021, AP reported. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities picked her up a few weeks later for not leaving the country, and she remained in custody for a year until she was released on house arrest.
“DWTS” appears to be leaning into her notorious reputation by letting her bill herself as as Anna Delvey for the show, the Associated Press reported. In its press release, the show also described her as the “notorious ankle bracelet fashionista” and released an image of her, wearing a short, glittering dress and the ankle monitor on her leg.
AP said that ICE has not returned requests for comment regarding changes to Delvey’s house arrest conditions that would allow her to film the show in the Los Angeles area. Delvey told The Hollywood Reporter that she was persuaded to appear on the show and said she received ICE permission to do so.
“I kind of got talked into doing this,” Delvey told The Hollywood Reporter. “I got the permission from ICE and then it was kind of too late to back out.” She also said she doesn’t expect that her ankle monitor will affect her performance. “It’s actually pretty light,” she said.
Delvey’s spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer, confirmed to AP Tuesday that she could travel within 70 miles of her home base and anywhere in the five boroughs of New York City under previous house arrest conditions, but could not comment on any changes to those rules.