Alfonso Ribeiro is dishing all about the real reason Tyra Banks left Dancing With the Stars.
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air alum, 54, opened up about the topic while chatting exclusively with Parade for the September digital cover. Banks, 51, served as the show’s host during Seasons 29 and 30 in 2020 and 2021, respectively, with Ribeiro joining the America’s Next Top Model alum as co-host for Season 31 in 2022. Banks left the show after that season, and Julianne Hough was named Ribeiro’s new co-host for Season 32.
“At the end of the day, I was friends with Tyra. I still am friends with Tyra, and I respect Tyra immensely. She’s a wonderful person and performer,” Ribeiro said. “I think unfortunately for Tyra, she came onto the show during COVID. And 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. It became a one-woman show. So everything was on her to deliver everything when the show wasn’t designed that way.”
Ribeiro went on to tell Parade that he feels that “the show set her up for failure because there was no way for her to win” after longtime host Tom Bergeron’s surprise exit from the reality series.
“You’re following Tom Bergeron, the best host on television, right? 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,” he continued. “You can’t have contact with the celebrities [nor] with the pros. You’re six feet from them doing an interview. Everything about her first two seasons was a setup for failure. Not that it was a failure, because the show still did well. But I feel like for the audience, they didn’t get to see what it felt like before because the setup was completely different.”
He added: “Everybody seems to think it’s a dance competition. It’s not a dance competition. It is a reality show wrapped in a dance competition, and it became just a dance competition. There was no audience, there was no feeling. 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. 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.”
Fans can catch more of Ribeiro on Season 34 of DWTS, which premiered on ABC earlier this month.
