Hope Solo on Maks and DWTS – Opinion
I’m sure that many of you saw the excerpts from Hope’s book tweeted by @DWTSGossip yesterday. While it appears that we cover every single thing DWTS related, we actually don’t. We tend to stay far away from pure, unadulterated, unsubstantiated gossip, particularly when it involves private lives or people’s livelihoods. So, when Vogue read those pages, she asked me what to do about it. I took it to the group and we here are PureDWTS had a bit of discussion on just what to do about it.
The end result of that discussion was that we would give our *opinions* on what we read, but we would not be re-posting those pages for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the potential for copyright infringement. If you must read them, by all means, go buy the book. We do have limits on just what we will post, but as this book speaks directly to DWTS production we figured we would at least comment on it. I’m up first. And I don’t quite know where to start. Except that I would remind everyone to remember that this is HOPE’S point of view and Maks has not been given the opportunity to respond OR defend himself. He has responded, somewhat, on Twitter and as you might imagine he is not happy at all, and he does give the impression that this is all lies by an “opportunist”. (See Notes at bottom.)
I am not a Maks fan, but I don’t think he’s a horrible human being or any such thing. He’s flawed, like most people are. I think that we have to assume that much of what Hope said about their interaction is true…to a point. After all, we saw some of it on camera. And she does say that they had plenty of good times that, of course, weren’t shown. I have to say, though, that Maks knows that by now and should have warned Hope accordingly. Instead he plays into productions hands time and again and then whines about it. On top of that, most everyone who is a regular at this site knows that I was appalled by his behavior that was shown at the time. Nothing makes that right. And if he actually hit her like she claims?? There is no excuse for that. But I would be lying if there wasn’t a large part of me that really wondered about the veracity of a lot of her comments. How much is inflated to sell her book…and get us talking just like we are?
Part of the reason I wonder such things is that some of her claims are so outlandish. As we have discussed many times on this site, the show can’t be rigged the way she says that Maks told her…that he had been told that there was a “secret memo” that said who was to be eliminated each week, and that they were going home so he was just causing drama to get ratings and get them to stick around longer. That may have been the end result…but it’s not determined in advance. There are rules in reality TV, believe it or not. Then all her claims that they were dancing a dance that was so much better and so much harder than everyone else’s, that no one else could do it. Um, really? I don’t remember that dance at all. If Maks was actually telling her that, he’s either delusional, or trying to build her confidence – and based on the whole section about where it looked like she was saying “F*^k you” to the judges I would have to say the latter. Read more..