Tavis Smiley Never Thought He’d Utter The Words “Dancing With The Stars”

Tavis Smiley talked with Aljazeera about Dancing With The Stars. He never thought that one day he’d be dancing on this show. In fact, the producers asked him three times to dance. On th third time, he finally said “Yes”. Read on for more…

You know, here at Al Jazeera America we do serious news. We don’t do tabloid. We don’t do much entertainment. So I suspect I am going to be the first person on this network to ever utter the following four words: “Dancing With the Stars.”

And you might be the last. You know what? I never thought I would utter those words either, in part because if you would ask me this, you know, five, 10 years ago, the answer would have been no. And when they did ask me this year, I told them no three times. On the third time, they said to me, “Just take a meeting with us.” And I took a meeting — long story short — and after the meeting, I sat down at my house, at my kitchen table, pulled out my pad, threw a line down the middle of the page — pros, cons. And it turned out, to my surprise and to my horror, quite frankly, that the reasons for doing the show outweighed the reasons for not doing the show, namely because I’m about to turn 50. And I figured I would do one last stupid, foolish, ridiculous thing before I turned 50. And this is it. This is definitely it.

Was one of the pros wearing a sparkly costume?

I will not be doing that, I can guarantee you. I had a long talk. I said, “You know what?I get final approval over what I wear.” We’re not going out like that. I’m not gonna be on YouTube the rest of my life with a sparkly costume on.

As you say, you and I are about the same age, but your knees are even more messed up than mine, and mine are pretty messed up. How are you going do it?

It’s tough. I mean, when I leave here tonight, I’m going to a six-hour dance rehearsal. I mean, my dancing partner, Sharna Burgess, is actually traveling with me while I’m on book tour. At the end of these long book tour days, anywhere from four to six hours every night, we dance. And it’s getting me in great shape, which is a beautiful thing. I had a friend of mine tell me, “Tavis, when you turn 50, man, you gonna look like 25.” He said, “You gonna feel like 75, but you gonna look like 25.”

Yeah. That’s probably right. You haven’t aged much, but you know …

But you know, there is a serious answer to this as well, other than I wanted to do something silly before I turned 50, and this is it. On a serious note, though, I love my parents, but I was raised in a very, very strict home.

And there was no dancing.

Yes. And there was no dancing. Not just dancing, Antonio. I couldn’t even listen to secular music. I had to sneak to watch “Soul Train” and sneak to watch “American Bandstand.” My parents were so serious about keeping us on, you know, that straight and narrow path, and sometimes, I think, a little too harsh and a little too strict. I love them to death, but a little too strict and a little too hard. And so here I was in college, and there were songs I’d never heard. I’d never been to a movie. My first movie, I’ll never forget, was “Purple Rain.” I’d never been to a movie theater.

I didn’t know how to pay, how to get in. I didn’t know they had popcorn. I’d never gone to a movie theater, and I was in college. So there were so many things I couldn’t do as a young person, and I’ve tried to redeem the time, shall we say. So here I am, 50, and I can dance, but I never learned really how to dance. I said, “You know what?Here’s an opportunity, and they’re going pay me to do this too.”

To read the full interview see, Aljazeera.