Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol Palin has claimed Dancing With the Stars pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy disliked her while competing on the show.
During an appearance on Cheryl Burke's podcast Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans, which dropped on Monday, the former DWTS contestant, 33, was asked "who rolled their eyes" at her and partner Mark Ballas when they made it through an elimination round.
"Oh, Maks?" Bristol Palin responded, referring to Chmerkovskiy, 44. "He hated me so much."
"Why did he hate you?" DWTS pro Burke asked, to which Bristol Palin explained: "I don't know, probably just because we kept going through."
The Teen Mom OG alum added that he was "was real nice at the beginning" but she "definitely felt the tension from him."
"I forgot about that," Bristol Palin said.
Newsweek reached out to Chmerkovskiy's publicist via email for comment.
In a statement to Entertainment Weekly, a representative for the choreographer said, "Maks doesn't hate anybody. For [Bristol Palin] to say that would be a mischaracterization of his feelings. I think he and everyone else in America, 14 years ago, thought that he and Brandy were on their way to winning that year, if not coming into the finals. So there was a bit of disappointment when she leapfrogged him into the finals. It's a competition. He's very competitive and took it seriously."
On Monday, Chmerkovskiy shared a video of himself playing a golf simulator game. "#therapy," he captioned the clip posted to his Instagram Stories.
Bristol Palin competed on season 11 of the reality TV dancing competition in 2010, where she and Ballas earned third place. In 2012, the mom of three—who shares son Tripp, 15, with ex-fiancé Levi Johnston and daughters Sailor, 8, and Atlee, 7, with her ex-husband, Dakota Meyer—returned to the ballroom on Dancing with the Stars: All-Stars. She competed against celebrities including Kirstie Alley, Apolo Anton Ohno and Joey Fatone and was eliminated during week four.
Bristol Palin rose to fame in 2008 when late Arizona senator John McCain chose her mom, Sarah Palin, as his running mate in the U.S. presidential election. The then-teenager was pregnant with Tripp at the time.
Her political background and often low scores drew backlash at the time, but many defended Bristol Palin competing on the show.
Former DWTS host Tom Bergeron previously told TV Guide, "The complaining amuses me to no end. Whenever someone says that Bristol shouldn't be there to me, I almost inevitably say, 'Of course, you're voting for... ?' And they go, 'Yeah, I didn't vote.' I have no sympathy for people who are kvetching about who's still there and who's gone..." he said. "If you want a technical dancer, watch PBS."
DWTS pro Derek Hough also praised Bristol Palin in an interview with E News!.
"Unfortunately, with the Palin drama and crazy entertainment it's brought to the United States, I suppose it comes with the territory," he told the outlet in 2012. "Good for her, good for her to put herself out there because it's really easy to kind of hibernate and just to disappear."
Bristol Palin's own mom hit back at backlash too. While speaking with Barbara Walters in 2010, Republican Sarah Palin addressed rumors her daughter remained in the competition despite low scores thanks to her political party.
"What do we do? Call every Tea Party person? I haven't got the time," the former governor of Alaska said. "Bristol has the greatest work ethic of any person I know. I knew that she would do well. And when Dancing With the Stars called her and wanted her to be on the show, I said, 'Bristol, you know you're going to open yourself up to criticism just because of your last name.' And Bristol said, 'Mom, you know it doesn't matter what I do. They're going to criticize me, so I might as well dance.'"
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