'DWTS': Selma Blair Reveals She Has 'Passed Out a Lot' During Rehearsals
Selma Blair's performances on Dancing With the Stars have been a challenge for the actress, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2018, but the hard work has paid off with great scores from the judges. She has fainted several times during rehearsals with pro dancer Sasha Farber but has refused to take time off. Blair and Farber will hit the ballroom again on Monday night for a James Bond tribute night.
Blair and Farber let Entertainment Tonight's cameras into their weekend rehearsal, where Blair introduced her service dog, Scout. One of Scout's jobs is to protect Blair when she has a fainting spell. Farber recalled Blair telling him the day before their rehearsals that she fainted at the airport. "I'm like, 'Take the day off, just chill,'" Farber recalled. "She's like, 'Nope!'" Blair wanted to practice for five hours, but Farber tried to limit the session to two hours.
"The thing is, I pass out a lot," Blair told her friend Amanda Kloots, who serves as a special correspondent for ET. "It's part of the reason I have Scout and it doesn't mean I lose consciousness [or] it's a whole ambulance experience, it's something that I lose my vision, gravity pulls me down and I'm very disoriented and gone for a spell. He's kind of there to also catch me, you know, make the ground a little closer with his back."
Blair, 50, added that fainting is "just something that I have to be honest" about. "It comes and goes," she said. Once she is calm, breathing, and moving again, she is "totally at home" on the dance floor. The Week 3 dance has an added challenge, as Blair will be wearing a blindfold for the entire dance.
Blair and Farber are dancing the Rumba to Sheena Easton's "For Your Eyes Only," from the 1981 Bond film of the same name. Farber has confidence in Blair dancing with a blindfold because he noticed that she usually closes her eyes when she dances. "Take away her vision so we would enhance the feel of the message from the brain," he thought. Blair said that she often closes her eyes when doing basic tasks at home.
The DWTS experience has been great for her health, Blair told ET. It has helped to center and balance her breathing. She hopes others learn the power of dance when they see her on the show.
"It's been so heartening to see what I think this can do for a lot of people that move or present differently and think they can't do things," Blair told ET. "It's such a blessing to be able to learn some fluidity with dance. It really does help me learn to breathe. That's something I've never done well, even before MS, just being a Midwest girl and not ever really approaching breath." Dancing With the Stars Season 31 streams live on Disney+, starting at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT.