Former Dancing With The Stars Champ Jennifer Grey Judges Strictly Come Dancing

Several of you asked if we’d report on Jennifer Grey’s appearance as a replacement judge for Len Goodman on Strictly Come Dancing in the UK last night. According to Metro, Jennifer was most impressed last night with Chelsee Healey and partner Pasha Kovalev. Right after their Charleston, Jennifer quoted a line all too familiar to us all and said, “You’re the baby in the competition. Well after that performance, no one is going to put baby in the corner.” Watch below…

There is a super write-up in the Daily Mail on the entire show last night (which also includes some great pictures). Of Alex Jones and James Jordan’s Quickstep, Jennifer remarked, ‘It was like a fine champagne. It was bubbly, effervescent, and made me feel giddy.’

Receiving some of his worst comments from the judges was Jason Donovan and his partner Kristina Rihanoff. Of their Rumba, Jennifer said, “You killed me softly with the that rumba. I think you need to dig deeper and connect more to your sexy power. I wanna feel more lust.”

Lulu and her professional partner Brendan Cole opened the show. Judging their Tango, Jennifer remarked with this: “How gorgeous are you? That was phenomenal. I don’t know what they’re putting in your porridge but I want some. Obviously, we have little slip-ups but I couldn’t help but love everything about you.”

If you go to MrAtariST You Tube Channel, you can watch Jennifer and view all the performances, the judges critiques, and scoring for the night. You’ll also be able to watch the whole episode in a couple of days at Strictly Come Dancing’s official site.

Also, before the show last night, Jennifer did a 60 second chat with Strictly Come Dancing’s online presenter, Nikki Dean (pictured with Jennifer above). Jennifer spoke on her biggest dance inspiration (Derek Hough and Nicole Scherzinger), her future career plans which include something dance related, her time on Dancing With The Stars, and more.

When it comes to dancing who is your biggest inspiration?
I was really just blown away by Derek (Hough) and his dancing and I just wanted to live up to his previous partner, which was Nicole Scherzinger and it was just painful every time I saw one of her dances because I just thought ‘How did that happen? How did she get there?’

Well of course you went on to win Dancing with the Stars with Derek and have starred in arguably the biggest dance movie ever, what career ambitions do you have left to achieve?
I have so many career achievements that I must do before I die, but I do know that I want to create a place where everybody can dance and experience the joy of dancing so I’m working on a project at the moment.

What was you favourite Dancing With The Stars moment?
I feel like the beginning was the best as the pressure hadn’t gotten so intense that it became a misery. It’s almost like there’s cycles and the beginning was like the honeymoon phase, we’re like ‘this is so incredible I get to dance hours every day and I get to learn all these great dances’ you have three weeks to learn basics of one dance. All of a sudden you’re learning two dances a week with only three or four days to learn a whole routine. I was not into the pressure and learning things immediately as I’m a really slow study.

When I was doing the Argentine tango that was one of the most painful weeks in rehearsal and the outcome was so exceptional that that was a real high for me.

How did it feel when you won Dancing with the Stars?
Winning at the end was amazing but I had ruptured a disc the night before in my freestyle so I was in the hospital the morning that I won in the operating room. I still had marks from the oxygen tubes on my face when I was in make up so I was a little like a zombie when I went out there. It was a little bit lacking what you think it might be as I think I was just running on fumes.

What would your advice be to this year’s Strictly contestants having been on the journey yourself?
Go for it, push yourself, break out of the pack, look after your health and do nothing else. Nothing! Just dance and eat and sleep and dance and eat and sleep.

Have you kept up the dancing since?
I wish, no I have not but there’s nearly no place to do it.

How are Strictly judges Len and Bruno perceived by American audiences on Dancing With The Stars?
They are beloved. They love booing Len and they scream with laughter at the hilarity of Bruno, I think they just love the show – they just love all of the bits of it.

You can read the interview in full here.

Sounds like a great night of TV for the UK and Jennifer was beautiful as always!! Here’s to Strictly Come Dancing’s results show tonight!!