Contestant on double-elimination week and who she thinks\nis the team to beat<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Lie Shia Ong<\/em> Melissa Rycroft first competed on \u201cDancing With the Stars\u201d\nduring the show\u2019s eighth season, placing third overall. Now back with her\noriginal partner, Tony Dovolani, the former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader and\nreality TV contestant (she was on \u201cThe Bachelor\u201d) says she hopes they can go\nall the way and bring home the mirror-ball trophy as the champions of this\nseason\u2019s \u201cDancing With the Stars: All-Stars.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n MSN TV spoke with Rycroft about what\u2019s ahead for her and\nTony as they head into a double-elimination week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MSN TV: You\u2019re going\ninto the third week of competition. What do you think the most challenging element\nwill be for the week ahead?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Melissa Rycroft: I think it\u2019s just going to be\nreinventing ourselves. The competition started at such a high level, and now we\nhave a double elimination, and after, I think I can say, the shocking\nelimination last week, we\u2019re all on our toes. You never know what can happen. I\nthink we spent extra time in the studio yesterday jus trying to put everything we\ncan into this Week 3 routine to make it to Week 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Knowing there\u2019s\ngoing to be a double elimination next week, does that change the way you\nprepare for Monday\u2019s dance at all?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Definitely. None of us knew that this double elimination\nwas going to be this soon. We knew there was going to be one later this season.\nSo, when we heard it was next week, we all kind of panicked up in the red room\ngoing, \u2018Oh my gosh. It\u2019s next week! Did we pick the right song? Do we have the\nright dance now?\u2019 Again, I think what we saw last week is how big the audience\nimpact is on the show because the bottom two of the night were not the bottom\ntwo on the leaderboard, so you\u2019re going in with that in the back of your mind, going,\n\u2018I need my dance scores to be high enough to compensate for any audience vote.\u2019\nIt\u2019s intimidating going into a double-elimination week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What dance are you\nand Tony working on this week?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tony and I are doing to be doing the samba, which is a\nfun one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This week we saw\nLen and Bruno had a little bit of a heated debate over your jive, and Carrie\nAnn sort of stayed out of the discussion. What did you and Tony think about their\ncomments?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I love the fact that Len was defending us. He was on our\nside, and usually it\u2019s kind of Carrie Ann and Bruno against Len, and this time\nLen had a comment that Bruno disagreed with, and we wanted to stay out of it,\nbut at the same time we also thought it was a little flattering that of all the\njudges up there, Len was the one defending us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You also mentioned\nthat you were all very surprised that Joey and Kym were eliminated What was the\nreaction among the other contestants right after that happened?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Every elimination from here on out is going to be tough because you really look around going, \u2018I don\u2019t know who\u2019s going to go.\u2019 You look at people like Sabrina and Shawn, and their scores are probably going to be up at the top of the leaderboard every week, and then you look at people like Bristol and Kirstie, and their fan votes are probably going to be at the top every week. You never know where you\u2019re going to factor into that equation. Everyone was shocked because the first elimination the bottom two were not in the bottom two. I think we all were just like, \u2018OK, I guess we move on. Here we go!\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Has it been more difficult\ncompeting for a second time or a little easier because you know what to sort of\nexpect?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s been harder. My body was not moving the same way. It\u2019s\nnot really reacting the same way. I\u2019m not much older. It\u2019s just three years,\nbut my body\u2019s changed a lot in those three years. But in terms of handling practice\nand handling the pressure it\u2019s definitely easier this time around. Tony and I are\njust kind of more relaxed and we know the process. We know on Wednesdays I\u2019m\nnot going to know the dance perfectly, so you go in Thursday and you finish\nlearning the technique. \u2026 You understand the process and you don\u2019t stress out\nor freak out quite as much as we did in Season 8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last time you were\ncompeting, you weren\u2019t a mom yet. Is it hard taking care of a young daughter\nand finding time to practice for the show?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Definitely harder than I thought it was going to be. On paper I thought I had it all planned out\u2014everything figured out, but it\u2019s hard because when I\u2019m at practice I constantly worried about her. Did she eat OK? Is she taking a nap? Is she having a bad day? And when I\u2019m home with her, I\u2019m constantly trying to go over my dance routine that I just learned in practice. It\u2019s hard, but ultimately, she\u2019s my number one priority and [my husband] Tye is the number one priority, and Tony understands that, and so far, we haven\u2019t had to cut into practice time or anything like that. I\u2019m just learning how to juggle and balance knowing that sometimes it\u2019s OK to make time for yourself when it benefits the family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of your fans,\nShelly, Facebooked in this question to ask you: Any plans for a Season 2 of \u201cMelissa\n& Tye\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Right now, no. That doesn\u2019t mean there won\u2019t be one ever. We filmed that earlier this year and we just kind of got busy with other projects going on. We\u2019ve now moved back to Dallas. If the timing comes up again to film, then absolutely, but as of now, we\u2019re not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have to ask you\nabout your thoughts about another ABC show snice you competed on \u201cThe Bachelor\u201d\nyourself. What do you think about Sean Lowe getting cast as the new bachelor?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I knew Sean, oddly, like five or six years ago because he\nwas dating one of the girls I was a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader with. I remember\nthinking he was so nice, and when I saw him on \u201cThe Bachelorette,\u201d I went, \u2018Oh\nmy gosh! What a small world we live in that I actually know this guy!\u2019 I have\nto say I haven\u2019t talked to him in a while, but what I did know of him he was a\ngreat guy. Really nice. All the girls had crushes on him. I think it\u2019s a great\nopportunity for him. I hope he finds love. If he doesn\u2019t, I hope he finds\nsomething else that\u2019s just as good too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you had to pick\na couple to win \u201cDancing With the Stars: All-Stars,\u201d who would it be?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Me [and Tony!] [Laughs]. Hello?! You know what, this is going to be a hard battle for everyone this season. Dance-wise I think right off the bat Sabrina and Louis have obviously proved that they\u2019re a powerhouse and they\u2019re going to be tough to beat, and the same with Shawn and Derek. Then you have the charisma of people like Emmitt Smith and Gilles Marini. All you can do is go week to week going, \u2018I hope I\u2019m in the mix. I hope I\u2019m enough.\u2019 It\u2019s going to be tough to beat them, but it\u2019s my goal to make it to the finals. So, we\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDancing with the Stars: All-Stars\u201d airs Mondays and Tuesday nights on ABC.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Contestant on double-elimination week and who she thinks is the team to beat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-msn-entertainment","category-portfolio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=643"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":865,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions\/865"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lieshiaong-sintzel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
MSN TV<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n