Tyra Banks Will Not ‘Back out’ of Hosting ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Despite Reports

Tyra Banks stepped into the ballroom to host Dancing With the Stars for the first time this fall, and despite rumors to the contrary, she won’t be a one-season-only host. Gossip Cop shut down a recent report from the National Enquirer claiming that Banks “is already trying to back out of hosting” another season of the show, an assertion mostly centered on a “horrifying gaffe” Banks made during the Oct. 5 episode.

While announcing the results of that week’s voting, Banks mistakenly placed the wrong couple in the bottom two. She announced that Vernon Davis and Peta Murgatroyd and Keo Motsepe and Anne Heche were up for elimination but ultimately had to call back Monica Aldama and Val Chmerkovskiy due to an error. Aldama and Chmerkovskiy were up for elimination while Davis and Murgatroyd were safe.

After the show, executive producer Andrew Llinares told Entertainment Tonight that the flub was “not” Banks’ fault. “I think Tyra dealt with it amazingly,” Llinares said. “I just want to be really clear, this was not Tyra’s fault. It was a behind-the-scenes issue.”

“There was a technical issue as the actual votes were coming in last night. What happened was, Tyra actually had the wrong names on her card,” he explained. “As soon as we realized what was going on, and we got the correct voting information, we immediately rectified that on air. We spoke to Tyra, we got her to guide us through that. I think she did an amazing job rectifying what happened live on the show. It’s not an easy thing to do, what she did.”

Judge Bruno Tonioli said that the names on Banks’ notecards were different from what she was being told in her earpiece. “It’s live television, things like this happen, especially with information coming in from all over the country, voting and calculating in such a small amount of time,” he said. “Tyra was brilliant … she was really good because she took control of the situation.”

Banks was announced as the replacement for previous hosts Tom Bergeron and Erin Andrews, and while she has received criticism from fans of the show, Tonioli said he wants fans to stop with the negativity and “let her do it her way.”

“Oh, please. Tyra did a fantastic job. She is doing it the way she wants to do it,” he said. “It’s a bit tiring, all the negativity, in not even giving people a chance. Just let her be who she is. It’s great to work with her.”