Dancing with the Stars contestant Michael Waltrip was apparently more sad than he let on to get eliminated from the series Monday night with his professional partner Emma Slater.
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"It was weird. I started on a dancing show and I thought dancing was just shaking your butt a little bit and running around the floor, but it turned into this emotional journey where we'd show up at practice every day and I wanted to make Emma proud of what she was teaching me," Waltrip explained during a Tuesday appearance on Good Morning America.
"And I wanted to hear the song and feel the song and have this connection with her. You get really invested. And when they said we were done last night, it kind of broke my heart."
Slater -- who cried at the announcement of her ouster from the competition -- said she never expected Waltrip, who is a professional race car driver, to have such a strong impact on her life.
"You don't really plan for that," the pro dancer noted on GMA.
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"You spend so much time in each other's pockets that you really affect each other, and I was just so happy that I got to spend it with someone who wears his heart on his sleeve. It really affected me and it meant more to me than any kind of dancing or any number that we did. It was fab."
The pair's experience wasn't all positive, however, as Slater had to work rehearsals around Waltrip's racing.
"That schedule was hectic. Every single week, we had at least two or three places to go to," Slater said.
"But I'm a new NASCAR fan because of it now. I just got thrown in the deep end and I learned all the terminology -- or, well, I tried to. It was great. I loved being a part of the NASCAR world."
Dancing with the Stars judge Len Goodman was also pretty tough on the couple this season although he seemed moved by their foxtrot performance Monday night. Slater laughed about how it's "difficult" to please or impress the head judge.
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"I wanted to move him back to England," Waltrip joked.
"He showed up with a little bit of an attitude. The prior week, we did the most beautiful tango. In the history of the Internet, there's only one thing of me being graceful on it, and it was our dance two weeks ago. It was like, 'Lenny, did you not see that?! It was a beautiful dance!'"
Regardless, Waltrip insisted his time on Dancing with the Stars was "a wonderful experience" and he's "so thankful" he got to be a part of the nineteenth-season cast.
About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski