Carole Baskin Speaks out on That Awkward Moment With Tyra Banks During ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Premiere

Carole Baskin is revealing what exactly was behind her awkward moment with Tyra Banks during Monday’s Dancing With the Stars premiere. As the Tiger King star opened up about her experience on the dance floor for Entertainment Tonight, Baskin shared what was going through her mind when she failed to respond to the host’s question about her dance, simply nodding and smiling as Banks moved on abruptly to the scoring portion.

“For my old ears, it was really hard to understand a lot of the cues and directions being given by the production crew. I compensate by reading lips, but you can’t do that when people are in masks,” Baskin explained of rehearsals leading up to the live TV moment. “I wasn’t able to hear Tyra Banks ask me a question after our live dance. Her face was turned to the camera, so I couldn’t read her lips. I felt awful that I put her in a spot of having to ad-lib based on my not hearing her. I realized she had said something, but didn’t want to waste precious TV time asking her to repeat the question.”

Baskin and her pro partner, Pasha Pashkov, earned an 11/30 for their paso doble to “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor in Monday’s show from judges Carrie Ann Inaba, Derek Hough and Bruno Tonioli. While the score was the lowest of the night, Baskin insisted in her guest blog for ET, “Failing is never an option for me, so being at the bottom of the pack right now just propels me to work harder, dance longer and really work on the performance aspects.”

Monday’s live performance was Baskin’s “very best rendition” of the dance, which the Big Cat Rescue founder said “thrilled” her. Next week, the pair will be dancing the Viennese Waltz to “What’s New Pussycat” by Tom Jones, taking their cat theme to a whole other level. Playing some of the “unknown” parts of her dance close to the vest for now, Baskin admitted going from two weeks of rehearsal to just one will be difficult. “I have to work on my posture!” she concluded. “I can do that. In fact, that’s really not a big lift for me, so I just have to really be aware and commit that purr-fect posture to muscle memory.”