Charity Lawson is looking back at the negativity surrounding her TV appearances and how much worse it got during her time on Dancing With the Stars.
The 28-year-old The Bachelorette alum recalled getting called names and much more during an appearance on the latest episode of former DWTS pro Cheryl Burke‘s Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans podcast.
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“I came into the Dancing With the Stars fanbase like, ‘This is going to be a piece of cake,’ only to be… almost to the point where it was so much worse than Bachelor and Bachelorette,” she said. “I was getting death threats for existing… for not performing enough, for being conceited, for being entitled, for being the biggest b–ch on the cast. It’s crazy.”
Charity recalled that “to a certain degree it was expected,” but she was not only getting negative comments on her posts, but also the posts on the DWTS accounts, which led to her talking to partner Artem Chigvintsev and then him going to higher ups.
“It was so damaging, night in, night out,” she shared, saying she would block and filter comments, but those would remain on the show’s page. “I had to tell Artem, ‘This is unfortunately what we’re dealing with and what we’re up against.’ If you look in comparison to every other contestant on this season, they don’t have this underneath their comments… I’m just literally existing and being called a b–ch.”
Through tears, she thought it was important to note her experience because of “the difference that I have to go through this life as a Black woman and being on a reality TV show. It’s like the same things are just not protected.”
“I just had to suppress it and it got to the point where I was like, I’m just trying to survive. I’m just trying to make it out of the season… There were weeks where I’d come home from rehearsal where I’m like, I literally hope I forget my steps and get voted off… It’s a really dark place.”
Charity also recalled how her video packages on DWTS were made to seem like she was boasting or bragging, but she was just answering questions from the producers.
“It’s shaped this way that I was boasting and bragging about my scores but I’m only talking about them because you guys asked me,” she shared. “That was really frustrating when I started to see my packages painted in this way; it’s almost skewing the viewers in this way of, ‘All she cares about are scores’ [and] ‘She thinks she’s better than everyone.’”
She was later asked if she thought race affected the outcome on the show and she replied, “Yeah.”
Charity came in fourth place on the most recent 32nd season of DWTS, which was won by Marvel star Xochitl Gomez and Val Chmerkovskiy.
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