Dancing with the Stars host Alfonso Ribeiro is defending his former colleague Tyra Banks’s hosting abilities.
The 54-year-old actor, best-known for his role as Carlton on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, spoke about Banks’s three years on DWTS during an interview with Parade earlier this week. Banks hosted the long-running ABC competition series in 2020 and 2021, during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, before Ribeiro joined her as co-host in 2022.
Banks received a bit of backlash during her time on the show, with viewers claiming she had awkward interactions with contestants. She also had a few on-stage missteps, including naming the wrong contestants who were in the bottom two and potentially going to be eliminated during Season 29. She later apologized for the mistake.
According to Ribeiro, who continues to co-host the program with Banks’s replacement, Julianne Hough, DWTS isn’t an easy gig to do alone. He told Parade: “The show set her up for failure because there was no way for her to win.”
“Not having the ability to connect with the celebrities and with the pros—how do you do that? It was always a two-person job,” Ribeiro said, noting that the ballroom was empty while Banks was hosting solo due to Covid restrictions.
“The ballroom was dead, right? Because no one was allowed to be in it. There was no way for her to fully succeed and to thrive in that circumstance,” he explained. “It was impossible. It was an impossible situation for her. And it sucks, because could she have been the long-term host of the show if it had been a different time.
“It became a one-woman show. So everything was on her to deliver everything when the show wasn’t designed that way.
Ribeiro also noted the difficulties of having Banks replace “the best host on television,” Tom Bergeron, who unexpectedly left the series after 15 years.
“You don’t have a co-partner, you don’t have anyone to bounce off of. It’s just you, which makes it about just you, right? Just by default,” Ribeiro said. “You can’t have contact with the celebrities [nor] with the pros. You’re six feet from them doing an interview.”
He continued to argue that “everything about her first two seasons was a setup for failure.”
“Not that it was a failure, because the show still did well,” In the House alum added. “But I feel like for the audience, they didn’t get to see what it felt like before because the setup was completely different.”
The actor also made it clear that during the America’s Next Top Model host’s time on DWTS, he had a good relationship with her.
“I was friends with Tyra. I still am friends with Tyra, and I respect Tyra immensely,” he said. “She’s a wonderful person and performer.”
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