'DWTS' shocker: Look who went home after earning perfect 10s

Lynette Rice
Updated

Apparently, one can have too much dance experience to compete on Dancing With the Stars.

After welcoming back partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy following his multiweek absence due to injury, Heather Morris became the latest celebrity to get the heave-ho from the ABC reality show.

The elimination was particularly shocking - and also elicited a massive chorus of boos inside the ballroom - because she and Chmerkovskiy earned a perfect 40 for their performance earlier in the night. But viewers may have felt that Morris, who worked as a backup dancer for Beyoncé and appeared on So You Think You Can Dance before joining the Fox dramedy Glee, was perhaps too qualified to compete under the mirror ball.

If she was disappointed or even remotely shocked, she didn’t show it to the judges. Morris gave special props to Alan Bersten, who filled in for Chmerkovskiy, and said both of them were “magical” partners.

“I think everybody’s reaction was .... they’re fine, she’s amazing, they’ll be in the next week,'” Chermkovskiy told reporters after the show. “This is so strange that it’s kind of okay given the way the show is. I felt sad ... I felt that there was a chance .. and opportunity for me and Heather to develop and build every single week and we got that cut short. There was a little bit of audible thrown in here and there and certainly Alan did an amazing job. He definitely showed himself this season more than before. I just feel bad it took so long for me to get back, even though this was the fastest I could possibly do. I’m going to miss coming to work because it wasn’t work. It was coming in to rehearse with a person who was amazing.”

Morris’ elimination after such a perfect performance is not unprecedented for the ballroom. Look no further than 2012, when singer/actress Sabrina Bryan earned the first perfect score of all-star season but was booted in week 6. The elimination was particularly painful because Bryan, who starred in The Cheetah Girls, was also favored to win during season 5 but got cut early then, as well.

Just as it was for Bryan, fans of DWTS didn’t take kindly to Morris’ elimination on Monday.

Patrick Gomez contributed to this report.

This article was originally published on ew.com