'Dancing With the Stars' Pro Cheryl Burke Revealed This A-List TV Star Only Lasted 1 Day on the Show

Dancing With the Stars occasionally gets that big name on the show that everyone recognizes. It might be surprising that they signed up to learn to waltz in the first place, but their presence can often have a big impact on the audience. Now, one former pro is revealing who her A-list TV star partner was for exactly one day. Yep, he didn’t even make it out of the rehearsal studio.

Cheryl Burke, who retired from the show in 2022, shared on her iHeart Media podcast, Sex, Lies and Spray Tans, that she was paired with Two and a Half Men star Charlie Sheen. He should have been her celebrity partner for Season 28 which aired in the fall of 2019. “Fun fact: I danced with Charlie for one day. Maybe you don’t know but he was going to do the show,” Burke told her guest, and ex-wife of Sheen, Denise Richards. Richards twirled on the show in Season 8, 20 seasons before her ex decided to give it a try.

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Burke was shocked that Sheen specifically requested her as his pro for the season. “I was like, ‘Are you sure? Because if you’re trying to convince somebody to do the show, I might not be the right person,'” she shared. “Because I hate lying, and I just don’t want to lie about how the process is.” If celebs aren’t fans of Dancing with the Stars, it’s often surprising for them to learn “it’s freaking a lot of work” once they start the rehearsal process. “And there’s a lot of press and a lot of interviews, and all of this stuff,” she added.

The retired pro thinks that after being challenged by the dance steps during his first rehearsal, Sheen had a lot of questions about the process. “But then he started asking me questions,” Burke said. “He asked me, ‘How many interviews do we have to do? Do we have to go and do press? And I told him, ‘Yeah, we do. We’re going to do GMA. Like we’re going to do Good Morning America.” The dancer, who has been sober for “almost six years,” also felt “a lot of compassion” for him and the obstacles he’s faced in his sobriety journey.

While Burke wasn’t sure why Sheen dropped out (she was later paired with retired NFL athlete Ray Lewis for the season), Richards seemed to understand why her ex-husband realized it was a bad idea. “He doesn’t like to work out,” Richards explained. “There’s a lot of physical activity with dancing. … He also wouldn’t want to do interviews. It would be a great challenge for him and something that he should do, but he doesn’t like to sweat.”

There were rumors that Sheen was going to do the show back in 2019, but he only admitted to being offered the job, not accepting the contract. “I was very flattered by ABC and their offer, but at the end of the day, I have two left feet and I just can’t dance,” he told Us Weekly while also revealing that his participation on Dancing With the Stars required him to play the lead in a new pilot for ABC. Fans may never get the real reason why Sheen exited the show after only one rehearsal, but Burke thinks he made the best decision for himself.

“He was really sweet and kind and humble, but I knew as soon as we were finished that it was probably going to be a hard no,” she summed up on her podcast. “This show brings out vulnerability in you — and if you’re not willing to be courageous or transparent in that way, this show could actually swallow you up.”

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