Britt Stewart Wants to Surprise You on ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Season 35

Britt Stewart has seen the outpouring of support from Dancing With the Stars fans in the past year. It’s actually what’s been driving her as she heads into the season 35 premiere. 

“I feel overwhelmed with all the love,” the professional dancer tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It makes me want to really show up for this season and bring the best out of my partner.” 

Britt is partnered with Taylor Hanson for the upcoming DWTS installment, a pairing that was much-discussed throughout Reddit forums and on TikTok. A professional dancer since season 29 in 2020, viewers wanted her to be partnered with a “contender”; despite six seasons already on the show, Britt’s highest placement was a fifth place finish in season 31 with her now-husband Daniel Durant. 

With many fans yearning to see the pro dancer make it to a DWTS finale and snatch her first mirrorball, she promises to lay it all out there with Taylor on season 35. “Everyone is always talking about the pairings — and then you actually meet the person,” she says. “When I met Taylor, I was like, This is my partner. He wants to go all the way. So if we have the same goal and he’s willing to work hard, why not put it out there that this year might be the season?”

Below, Britt chats with THR about how her dance career led her to the ballroom, the importance of her casting as the first Black female DWTS pro, meeting her husband Daniel on the show and why Taylor Hanson was “meant to be” her celebrity partner. 

I want to dive into your career. You were in the High School Musical musical movies; how often do people ask you about your time working on High School Musical? 

All the time, definitely on a monthly basis. It will always get brought up into the conversation of my career because of the impact it’s had on pop culture, like DWTS. High School Musical was the start of my dance career. I was 15 in the first one, so sometimes I’m like, I still can’t believe after 22 years I’m still getting asked about the movies that started my career. I’m really grateful and so blessed that is what I can say is the start of my career.

Monique [Coleman] and Corbin [Bleu] have both competed on the show. I feel like if another star comes on the show one day, you’d be a shoo-in to be their partner.

You would think so. You never know with casting. Both Daniel and I are friends with Lucas Grabeel. I know him from the High School Musical series, and Daniel did Switched at Birth with him. Both of us have been like, “Lucas, would you ever come on to Dancing With the Stars?” Maybe in the future I can convince him.

Can you talk about your road to being cast on DWTS? I read that you were scouted at a Disneyland 60 performance and then asked to audition for the troupe. Is that true?

Yes, that is true. I take a lot of pride in this. I feel like a lot of the other pros have a very similar journey, whether it’s the connected world of competitive ballroom dance or half of our pros are from Utah from Center Stage [dance studio]. There were also the early days when people like Jenna Johnson, Lindsay Arnold, Witney Carson, Alan Bersten and Hayley Erbert Hough were all found from So You Think You Can Dance. Then there’s me, who is from Colorado (laughs), did not grow up doing ballroom dance. I started at 15. By the time I joined Dancing With the Stars, I was turning 27, so I had already been in the industry for quite some time, and had this full, beautiful and blessed commercial dance career in TV, film, and backup dancing. 

Mandy Moore, who was supervising choreographer/producer on the live TV show and choreographs and directs our national tours each year, hired me to do Disney’s 60th anniversary. It was an ABC special, and Derek Hough was hosting. I was a dancer part of the special, and that’s how I got discovered to get an audition for Dancing With the Stars, and then I came onto troupe in 2016. Here we are, 10 years later. 

When you were promoted, you became the first Black female pro on the show. What was that like for you to join the show in such a prominent casting, while also joining during the COVID season, also during such a political time for the United States?

Yes, 2020 was a very charged time in America with so much happening. I was shocked when I became a pro that year. The season prior, in season 28, production had gotten rid of the troupe, so there was one season I was not a part of because I didn’t get promoted. However, the spring of 2019, they had massive auditions to find new pros, and I did audition, even though I was on troupe. It was a very thorough process; you had to choreograph two dances — one Latin, one ballroom — and you had to do an on-camera interview. You also had to teach a non-dancer how to dance on camera.

I had actually gotten really good feedback about my audition. I remember getting the call from our showrunner, and he basically dropped the ball [and] was like, “I’ve got no good news right now.” (Laughs.) Even though they were very impressed, I wasn’t getting promoted, and at the same time, they were getting rid of troupe. I was still involved behind the scenes that season, but not in any way on screen. 

So when I got the call to be a pro in 2020, I wasn’t expecting it. But a lot of things in my career that have ended up being the best things in my career happened to be unexpected, so that moment was not unlike many other major significant moments for me. At first was like, “Here we go! I got promoted. I’m excited. I’m taking the job seriously. I can’t wait. This is a dream come true after five seasons being on troupe,” and then it hit me, the significance of becoming the first Black female pro, and knowing how important that representation was and still is for my community. It’s still a big deal to me. I still take it very important in my life, and I don’t take it lightly.

Viewers are dying for you to make it to the finale and see a Britt Stewart freestyle. Have you seen that support from the audience, and what does that feel like to know fans want to see you have the full breadth of the DWTS experience?

I have seen it. It’s an interesting relationship with social media, being on Dancing With the Stars. There’s a ton of negativity, but then there’s a ton of positivity. In the past, I don’t go out searching for anything, and I still don’t. Now that it’s fall, all of our algorithms are Dancing With the Stars and I have seen the support, and it’s beautiful. It’s almost overwhelming. I didn’t realize how much people want to see it. 

I know what I feel in my heart. I know my goals and my dreams and the things I want to accomplish. But then to feel that reciprocated for our Dancing With the Stars fans has been overwhelmingly beautiful. It makes me want to really show up for this season and bring the best out of my partner to the best of my ability. It feels very supportive and very beautiful that people want to see me go all the way. I definitely feel the love.

It’s so early, but do you think season 35 could be the year we see Britt make it to the finale?

Oh, gosh! Well, you never know. Dancing With the Stars is like the wild, wild west: Sometimes there are people you think might go out early who make it all the way. What I’m really hopeful about is that I’m excited about my partner, and he is very teachable. He’s passionate about learning dance, and he wants to go all the way. So if we have the same goal, and he’s willing to work hard for it, why not? Why not put it out there that this year might be the season? 

What was it like when you met Taylor Hanson and realized he was your celebrity partner? 

Meeting Taylor was amazing. I was born in ’89, so I grew up in the ’90s, and that’s when Hanson was number one on the charts. I am a millennial so I can appreciate the significance of Taylor Hanson and how awesome it is for him to be on Dancing With the Stars. I kind of sighed in relief when he told me during our first meet, “I will do whatever you need me to do. If that means buying a cot and sleeping at the dance studio so we can rehearse all the time, that is what I will do.” I was like, Okay, he wants to work for this. He’s in it to win it. That commitment is so important. 

Everyone is always talking about who you get paired with, who they’re hoping someone gets paired with, and then you actually meet the person that you paired with, and I’m a believer that everything happens for a reason. When I met Taylor, I was like, This is my partner. I 1,000 [percent] believe that he is meant to be my partner. We have a lot of things in common. Our energy is very similar. It was only a few things that he said in our first meet, and I was like, Ah, we’re gonna get along just fine.

You are a part of one of two DWTS [celeb-pro] pairings who went on to get married. When you go back into the studio and you’re in the ballroom, in these places where you and Daniel formed your connection, does that at all make you be like, “Wow, this is such a magical experience I had in my life?”

Oh, absolutely. Regardless of anything, Dancing With the Stars will always be the place where I met my husband. Daniel and I geek out about it. We’ve lightly suggested that it will be pretty awesome when one day our kids ask us, “How did you guys meet?” and we’ll be able to say, “We can literally show you the moment that we first met.” It’s amazing. Neither of us realized the chemistry and connection we had in the process. We were so busy with the demands of Dancing With the Stars that still we feel like everyone saw it before we did. There’s something magical and special about that as well; that we were just living life, and later on we were like, Okay, this is more than just dancing together. And now we’re married and just celebrated our one-year anniversary, and things are great.

Congratulations! How often do you two go back and watch your dances from the show?

Okay, we have never gone back and watched our full season together.

Wow.

(Laughs.) If a clip comes up on social media or we get tagged in something, we’ll sit there and reflect back. But we have never gone back and watched our season. As an actor for Daniel, it’s kind of tradition. He doesn’t really watch himself onscreen, so it’s partially that, and then partially like, well, that was fun and amazing, and that was then, and just living in the present and enjoying moments when fans tag us in videos of our time together on Dancing With the Stars. Isn’t that crazy, though? We’ve never gone back.

That’s crazy, thank you for sharing that.

Of course. It’s wild when fans tag us in little moments throughout our season, watching our first meet and watching me know zero — I didn’t know any sign language. I was just talking at him, and it’s such a visceral and interesting experience to see, also, my journey of learning sign language. To also be able to see the progress of my personal journey within my relationship has been beautiful.

Before you joined DWTS, was there another pro you looked up to?

Cheryl Burke. Still one of my favorite female pros is Lindsay Arnold.

What is your favorite part of a full week in DWTS; the choreography process, the teaching/rehearsing, dress rehearsal, or live show day?

The day after the show is probably the worst day (laughs) because all of the energy is coming off, and then our poor celebrities have to learn a completely new dance style. My favorite day of the week would have to be Mondays, because you get to see the work you’ve been working on for the past week come to life. It’s the first time you get to see it on camera, and it’s a real moment to where if you need to adjust anything as a choreographer, you can. You start to see your partner come to life in a performance mindset because you’re in the ballroom.

What is the hardest style of dance to teach a celebrity?

It depends on your celebrity. But I would say, probably across the board, samba is the hardest. It has incredibly nuanced technique that is hard to teach in the timeline of Dancing With the Stars. 

What is your favorite number you’ve choreographed on DWTS?

My jazz with Daniel. “Enjoy the Silence.” My jazz routine where the music shut off. Jazz is my favorite dance style, and that specific jazz, I curated for Daniel to look good on his body. It pushed me as a choreographer. I remember when the music dropped out, I was still using my breath. I really had to push myself to go into Daniel’s world and not use even my own breath to stay on beat. 

When we did it live, the guy that warms up our audience, he warned the audience that there was going to be a moment where the music went out, and he said, “Please, no one make a sound.” And that’s what happened. The whole studio audience was — I mean, I’m getting chills thinking about it. Everybody was quiet in that moment. It’s something that I’ll remember forever.

You’ve probably already had your favorite celebrity partner, but if you could not say your husband, do you have a dream celebrity partner?

Tom Holland. His wife, Zendaya, she’s already been on the show. She can prep him. She could show up, say hi to Val. It probably will never happen, but a girl can dream.

Which pro besides yourself should become a judge in the future?

Mark Ballas. Another person that would be awesome would be Val [Chmerkovskiy]. I also want to say this, because Emma Slater, she’s one of my girls, and her dream is to host. If there was some sort of thing that she could do to add to Julianne and Alfonso’s great chemistry, I know that would be a dream come true for her. And you can throw me in there, too.

Describe season 35 of DWTS in one word.

Surprising.

I think it’s going to be unexpected. That’s my gut feeling. I think it’s going to be unexpectedly surprising.  

Season 35 of Dancing With the Stars premieres on Tuesday and Wednesday at 8 p.m., simulcasting across ABC and Disney+, and streaming the next day on Hulu.