Jordan Fisher isn’t exactly on board with Dancing With the Stars‘ recent host switch-up — but he’s willing to give it a shot. The 26-year-old performer, who won season 25 of DWTS in 2017 and went on to host Dancing With the Stars: Juniors in 2018, called Tyra Banks’ recent casting as host of the series “odd.”
“It’s odd. Tyra is very talented, and ABC, I would say, most of the time knows what they’re doing. It’s really just a matter of seeing it actually happen,” Fisher told Katie Krause on Wednesday at the press day for his new Netflix movie, Work It.
“I’m curious… the tonal quality of the show is so family-oriented, and I think that Tom [Bergeron] and Erin [Andrews] have played a large part in cultivating that feeling for fans at home,” Fisher continued. “So their absence, I think, is… I mean, it’s evident based on social media and all that stuff how people feel in terms of their absence from the show.”
ABC announced on July 13 that Bergeron, who hosted DWTS since its first season in 2005, and Andrews, who co-hosted since season 18 in 2004, would not be returning. The next day, Tyra Banks was announced as host and an executive producer.
“She’s an EP on the show as well, so I don’t know,” Fisher told 360aproko. “I don’t know what that’s gonna look like or sound like or feel like, or anything along those lines. So, we’ll see. We’ll see when the show comes back up.”
While Fisher will be tuning in to Dancing With the Stars, his Work It co-stars, Liza Koshy and Sabrina Carpenter, are open to joining the show as competitors.
“Yes!” Koshy excitedly told 360aproko.
“I’m like, preparing myself, because I got tendonitis from doing a two-month dance film, let alone a full dance show. I’d definitely think about it, because it’s always been something that I’ve looked at and been like, ‘God, that would be so fun. I could do some of the things,'” Carpenter added. “Then there’s other things where I’m like, ‘I don’t know if salsa and I go together,’ you know what I mean?”
Work It stars Carpenter as Quinn Ackerman, a student whose admission to the college of her dreams depends on her performance at a dance competition. So, with the help of Koshy and Fisher’s characters, she forms a ragtag group of dancers to take on the best squad in school.
Fisher told 360aproko the movie is unlike other dance movies because “it’s not really about dance.” “It’s really about people. It’s about growth, it’s coming of age,” he described. “It’s a true underdog story, which isn’t atypical where a dance film is concerned, but to me, the messaging that I think is very important, hopefully the people take away from it, is like, how OK it is for plans you have in your life to change.”
“Life will throw you curve balls, and however you navigate that… informs the success of your journey,” he said. “There’s not enough out there that talks about that.”
