Heading into Week 1!

00:00:13
Speaker 1: Hello. It is podcaster, TV director, and mom of two, but forever known to most as Tapanga from the nostalgic TGIA favorite Boy Meets World. Currently, though, I am deep in the process of learning how to ballroom dance for season thirty four of Dancing with the Stars, and still I have absolutely no experience in the field. I'm not even sure I should be doing this. But one thing I am sure of. I will be keeping you updated in the form of this podcast, Danielle with the Stars, chronicling my entire journey to place a mirror ball on my shelf and show it off to everyone whoever enters my home. Wa. I have started week two of training for Dancing with the Stars. I have so many updates for you. We have been so busy. Before I started the show, everyone said to me, Oh, just you wait, this schedule is gonna be insane, and I thought I had a pretty good understanding of how it was going to be, and even hearing like, oh, you rehearse for four hours a day, six days a week, and I thought, yeah, that sounds like a long time. And I thought, but you know, four hours a day is not that bad. Let me tell you something. Four hours a day of high physical exertion is so much time. And I get to my practices early. Pasha and I stretch because boy, if you are not warmed up, you could really do some damage to your body. So, you know, we also do like a lot of morning rehearsals we have. So the way the rehearsal schedule is broken up is you either pick nine am to one pm, or you pick one pm to five pm, or you pick five pm to nine pm. So when I first got that schedule and they were like, let me know what your preferences are for rehearsals, I was like, oh, I'm definitely a nine to one or a one to five. As a matter of fact, I can never do five to nine, I said. And now that I'm looking back on it, I'm like, ooh, maybe I need some five to nines because at least, if you're working out and you're dancing from five pm to nine pm, you have an entire day to get warm. When you have a nine am rehearsal, I'm waking up at my normal five thirty six o'clock, making my kids lunches, getting my bag together that I need to do, taking a shower, putting on my workout clothes and then getting there and like trying to warm up your body so that you're ready to dance is not a quick process. So we get there early so that we can stretch and make sure we're keeping our bodies healthy, and then it's still just hard. Like I have a cryotherapy appointment after I record this podcast. I've never done cryotherapy. I ordered one thousand dollar compression boots for my legs. I listen, that may sound insane. It sounded insane to me when I went to go order them, and I thought, You're only going to be doing this for a couple of months. Is this a worthwhile investment? And with the way my hamstrings feel right now, it was an immediate yes, this is worth the investment. So I have been going to get massages, not at like nice spa places. I'm talking about places where it's someone with an elbow and they're just jamming that elbow into every muscle of your body, high up into my neck, high into my hamstrings. Just an absolute painful experience. With that said, I've never had so much fun in my entire life. It is the best thing I've ever done. I am already sad that this means it's going to be over at some point. I'm completely obsessed with it. I have already told Jensen that I'm not sure how we're going to work this out, but I'm pretty sure I have to be a full time dancer now. And guys, when am I going to find time to record podcasts? I don't know, but dance is my number one priority next to my children. Uh. It's the greatest thing I've ever done. I wake up every single day excited to get into the studio. I'm so lucky that Pasha is my pro dancer. When I tell you that, at this stage, we're on like day eight of rehearsal and we've now shown the dance to a couple of people, and everyone's like, wow, you guys have done all of that in a week. And Pasha is so quick to like give me a compliment about that I'm a fast learner and that I'm coordinated and that I am flexible. Like he's so fast to give me the compliments. It has nothing to do with me. He is so smart about the way he teaches. He's told me right from day one. He's like, we're going to learn in layers. You're going to learn the space layer. Then once you have the space layer down, I'm going to teach you another layer. And I told him that my goal was for us to have one day of tweaks. We've already had a few days of just fine tweaking. And that doesn't mean I'm close to perfection yet. I'm definitely not. I still have places to grow and lots of things to get right. But he's been so methodical about the way he has taught me. I feel like it just all makes sense. I'm no longer. There are things that when I first started remembering the steps was all I could think about. But then I would have this look on my face that was, you know, kind of like RBF. But that's because I was thinking so much. I was just like and then I'm like day three. He said, all right, now, you're gonna count and I went what He said, Yeah, I've been doing the counts all this time out loud, one, two, three, and four, and I was like, wait, no, no, I've been listening to you, but I haven't been paying attention enough for me to do it out loud. And he said, then I'll do it with you, and he did it with me a few times. Through the whole dance. Then the next day he was like, it's on you all by yourself, and I got that down. By the time that day was over, I felt really confident with that, which was great because then that night when I go to bed, I was able to close my eyes and without having to watch the video of our dance, just by the counts, I was able to close my eyes and imagine every step of the dance. And then if there was a moment where I was like, wait, what do I do there? Then I could go look at the tape and be like, ah, that's that one. I need to remember that to that step. So by the time we like then we accomplished that goal, I could count the whole thing. And then the next thing he said was now I need you to show it on your face and to like let go of your brain. Stop dancing with your brain, start dancing with your heart. And I was like, okay. And you'd think, having been an actor for the majority of my life that that would be super easy for me, but my little acting chops needed to be dusted off. They had been on a shelf for a long time. I was still also just in my head thinking about the steps thinking about having a long neck, which does not come naturally to me. I am a typing shoulders up in my ears like this type of person, and I've had to learn to elongate my neck. So I'm still I was still a little bit in my head. But after a full day of him telling me I need more intensity, I need to see more intensity, yesterday was a day that I was like, I got it now. And then today he brought in an audience, our troop members who are incredible and amazing. I got to meet all of them today. So he brought in the troop, and it was his goal was to see whether or not having an audience threw me off, because when you're doing the live show and there's a five hundred people in the audience watching you, they clap in weird places, they hoot and holler, somebody goes whoa, and like, if you've only been doing your dance in a quiet room with you and your pro, that could really throw you off. So he brought in the Troop, who were very vocal. And when I tell you, I came alive in front of that audience. It felt different, it looked different. We recorded it. Pasha was so happy like he had a huge smile on his face. He was like, that was your best performance yet, which felt really good, and I feel very proud. I'm still very achy. Like I said, I can't wait to get to cryotherapy. But it's also been a very exciting week. We have had a lot of events. This past Friday, we had the Hulu End of Summer Soiree, which was so much fun. Pasha and I got to walk the red carpet. I got to meet Quinta Brunson, who if you guys understood what a fan I was of hers, it was There've only been like a couple times, truly, like a handful of times in my life where I have lost my cool around someone. One was Michael Keaton to j Cole three. Quinta Bronson, I like fully saw her. I was like, I grabbed Pasha's arm. I was like, before we leave tonight, I have to get a picture with Quinta. Then I got to talk to her on the red carpet. Was very excited. She is apparently a fan of mine, which blew my mind. She is lovely and smart and kind and cool and calm, and I was none of those things. We had a great time at that party. The red carpet was wonderful. We got to talk to a lot of different outlets, and then when we were done with the red carpet, we were all very sweaty because don't ask me why they did this, but they set the red carpet up directly in the sun and we were all just melting. But it was still great, great interviews, great people. And then we turned the corner and we went inside and the Shifting Gears cast and producers were standing there taking a group picture and I waited for their picture to be done, and then I wiggled my way in there and we all just screamed upon seeing each other. They had asked me to direct one of their episodes for season two and I had said yes, and then I ended up agreeing to do Dancing with the Stars, and so I had to back out of my episode of Shifting Gears for the time being. And so they understood. They knew why they're so supportive. They were so excited to see me, and I was so excited to see them. So I got to talk to everybody about what this experience has been like. Kat Dennings is just a true gem of a human being. And she's so excited for me, so I'm really hoping that she'll come and watch me in the ballroom one week, along with a bunch of the other cast as well. So that was great. Then we took a really beautiful Dancing with the Stars portrait in the People Portrait room and it's a very cute picture. It looks like a family portrait, looks like the two people in the middle or the matriarch and the patriarch, and then there's like a bunch of grandkids around. It was really nice. So we took that group picture with all the pros and all the celebs that were there, and then also Dina Katz and Conrad from the BBC, so that was incredibly fun. The food was really good there. There was carmel gelato at the end of the night, which I hope Pasha doesn't mind that I'm blowing up a spot, but I will tell you that Pasha ate three bowls of carmel gelato. He offered me one every time he had one, and I was like, I'm good with the one, and if I'm being honest, I probably would have definitely had a second, but I chose not to because boy, I'm getting into dancer shape. It's happened very quickly. I'm not trying to lose weight. I'm not opposed to it. I was looking forward to getting into good shape. But I did not come into this going I'm going to lose pounds. I just was like, I'm going to work as hard as I possibly can, and whatever happens to my body happens to my body. But I know I'll be fitter and stronger by the time this is over. I have lost five pounds in eight days now. A lot of that is probably water weight. I'm sweating way more than usual. I'm hydrating way more than usual because i have no choice. I'm putting electrolytes in my water. I'm trying to do all of the things, and I'm also eating very clean. I have been eating brown rice, broccoli, asparagus, and then either shrimp, chicken, or steak, or a little bit of all of the above. But that's mostly what my diet has consisted of. There have been a couple instances of Chuck E Cheese pizza because when I've been with my boys, we've gone to Chuck E Cheese and I thought, you know what, it's okay. Have some chuck e cheese pizza. So there have been some nights like that. But I'm eating really clean and I'm, you know, spending a minimum of four hours a day dancing, so I guess it makes sense. But it's happening very quickly. My legs are very toned, my arms are very toned, and we're not even to the first live show yet, so I truly cannot imagine what I'm going to look like when this is done. But maybe I'll do a bodybuilding competition or something. Who knows, you know, it's my year of Yes, why why stop with just dancing? Why not just take it one step further? Who knows what the future holds for me? So we had the end of Summer soiree, which was amazing, and then two nights later, this past Sunday night, I was asked to present the award for Best Director of a Reality Program and Best Director of a Documentary at the Creative Arts Emmys, which is quite an honor. I was very excited to be asked, and as someone who was nominated for a Creative Arts Emmy for directing a multiicam for Ravens Home, it felt very nice to be a part of it. On this side where I got to give someone an award, and I was on the other side I lost. But on this side, I got to give someone an award and I got to say congratulations, and I got to hold the Emmy, which there was a part of me that's I'm not usually superstitious, but I was like, I don't want to hold an Emmy until it's mine. But I had no choice. I was presenting, so I had to do it. So if I never win an Emmy, I'm gonna say it's because I held the Emmy before I won. But anyway, I digress. I also ran into Otsko, who is one of my favorite comedians in the entire world. Between Otsco and Quinta, it was quite a weekend of fangirling for me. Another person who when I walked up to her and I had no chill and no cool, and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm such a big fan of yours. Can I please take a picture? And she was like, girl, I've been over here trying to figure out how I was going to make this run and happen. And I was like, oh, I just go right for no chill, just immediate, Hi, I'm a fan please let me take a picture with you, which I don't know. Maybe after being in the business for thirty some odd years, I should have a different, more cool approach, but I'm an elder millennial. We have no coolness. We're just we're just like real straight, straightforward with our nerdiness if I'm going to be blunt, But I got to take some great pictures with her, which meant a lot. I was hoping to present an award to mister a Mere Questlove Thompson. He was nominated for Best Director of a Documentary. Another very deserving person won it. But I did get to see Questlove in the holding room where they have the presenters before they go out, and Questlove and I filmed a TikTok that I'm very excited about. So yeah, it was just a really super fun night. Great. I absolutely loved, have loved my glam from beginning to end of this experience. It's been so long since I've had to be in front of the camera. Like, of course, I went to The Wizards Beyond Waverley Place premiere and I did a couple of interviews for that, but like, I'm not the star of that show. I'm not even on that show. I'm just a director of that show, so it has I haven't felt like I've had to be the person in front of the camera for a really long time. And I have then had a couple of wardrobe fittings with my wonderful stylist, Mimi. She's brought me a bunch of stuff. We tried it all on. I picked like twelve outfits that I was like, I love these, top to bottom, I love these. This is what I'm going to buy all of these. I'm going to keep them in my closet and then when something comes up, I'm going to have it. So for the Emmys, I did not have a red carpet look planned and Mimi wasn't available, and so I was like, oh, what am I going to do? I have to find something. So I went online and I went to Bronx and Banco, which is a company that made the dress that I wore for the iHeart Music Festival last year when I ran into j Cole and you may have seen that video it went viral of me seeing Jake and being thrilled to see him. They made that super cute dress. It's like white lace with shoulder pads and it was Mini. It was so cute, so I know I like that brand. So I went to the Bronx and Banco website and I started looking at things, and then I found I went to Nemen's and I went to sacks All online to see who could ship stuff to me the fastest, and I picked a dress that's this big production, I mean feathers around my hands, deep plunging v in the front, high slit shearer. And I was like, I this feels crazy, but it arrived. I tried it on. I did not have to make a single alteration to it. I did order two sizes. I wasn't sure if I was going to be a smaller an extra small, and I ended up going with the extra small. Absolutely loved the dress. And then my best friend, one of my best friends for since I've been twelve years old. Her name is Jamie Hargreaves, and if you want to check her out and see all of her beautiful jewelry, you can check out on Instagram at Forever Fine Jewelry. And when I tell you that it pays off to have a bestie who works with diamonds, let me tell you it has been very special. I call her I'm like, listen, I'm presenting an award. Here's a picture of the dress I'm wearing. What do you got? And she comes to my house. She's got a bunch of different jewelry, she lets me try it on. I pick the things that I think are going to look best, and then I get to borrow it for the night, and then she comes back the next day and picks it up. So that has been amazing. She's going to be working with me throughout the season whenever there's an opportunity for me to wear great diamonds or gemstones for different dances, for different red carpet events, She's going to be on call. Also. My hair and makeup team who I have had forever. My hairdresser at Underscore Hair by Laurie Lori Heaps. She's the one who did my fantastic original Topanga haircut back in nineteen ninety five. She has been doing my hair ever since, so truly, for twenty nine years, Laurie Heaps has cut and colored my hair. She still does all my glam for every event, and she's been killing it. So she took care of my hair. My makeup artist Julie Cuomo, who I met when I was hosting the show called The Dish for the Style Network. She worked at G four. She's been my makeup artist since then. I was twenty seven then, so we're almost at, you know, twenty years there, or at least at seventeen years. She is on Instagram too, Julie the Number four makeup, that's Julie for makeup. I do the same thing with them. I send them a picture of what I'm wearing. They come up with inspo, and then they send me pictures. They go, what do you think about this? And the truth is I say to them every single time, whatever you think. I trust them so implicitly. I don't even need to have a hand in it. I just know that if they like it, I'm going to love it, and so I let them do their thing, which is also what my relationship has been like now with Pasha. I just whatever he says, I listen to him. Whatever he wants to do, we do, which includes social media. How is Pasha so good at so many things? Our social media game has been on fire, if I do say so myself. And seventy percent of the ideas are Pasha's and they're all so funny. His acting is so good. He's just killing it. And I like how we're finding time to record the stuff we're recording. I don't know. I will tell you we were both so so excited about our construction TikTok to roadwork rapping by asap Rock. We were we put in so much effort into that TikTok that and we were we just love it, and apparently none of you guys do, which you know, it's fine, it's totally fine. You don't have to like it. We did it for us, but it would feel more validating if you guys liked it too, because boy, we love it so much. It's so stupid. It's so stupid. It's first of all, it's a great song. It's a rap song about construction vehicles for children by a very successful, very famous, legitimate rapper, asap Rock. And then it's the two of us goofballs in a hard hat and construction bests dancing if you want to call it that on a construction site to the song that's so dumb. Why isn't everybody loving it? I don't know. Maybe we just have an odd sense of humor, but at least you're liking all the rest of them, which means a lot to us. We love reading your comments, we love engaging with you. It's been just an absolute blast. My notes for myself moving into the final week before we go live, so we've got eight days before the first live show. My big note for myself is I have to take care of my body. I haven't been as good about it as I wanted to be. I have been rehearsing, and then we've had meetings, or we've had glam or we've had interviews, and then events, and then I come home and I want to be present with my kids, and or I want to be present with my husband. And then by the time it's like okay, now's when you would take an ice bath, or now is when you would get a massage or something. I'm so tired. I've just been going to sleep, so I probably haven't been stretching as much as I should be. I'm definitely starting cryotherapy. I did buy an ice bath, like an inflatable ice bath that, thank goodness, mister Will recommended to me. He sent me a link. He's like, you're gonna need one of these, and I said, this is an immediate purchase. So it helps to have best friends that are super supportive. Speaking of best friends who are super supportive, Will and Writer are both gonna come to my first live show, which is really gonna mean a lot to me to have them there. We only get six family tickets, and so I think the first week it's gonna be Jensen and my boys, my mom, my dad, and my dad's wife. I would love if my brother could be there. I would love if my aunt and uncle Andy Joanne and uncle Pete could be there, and that would, for that first week really make me feel like my core, like my super support system is there for me because I'm between Will and Writer, like my two best friends and my family. But I don't think I'm gonna be able to get nine tickets. Did email and say, is there anyone who maybe isn't using all their tickets? Maybe I could borrow some. There's also a green room apparently that is a viewing room that they said if you have young kids and you're worried your kids aren't going to be able to sit and stay still for two hours, they could watch from the viewing room. But I don't want Jensen to have to watch strictly from the viewing room, so I asked if maybe Jensen and the boys stayed out there for my dance, but then somebody took the boys back to the green room. Could I have Like, could I have nine tickets but three people are in the viewing room and six people are on the floor, And then if they want to switch at some point, they could switch. So I'm trying to be creative and I know that they'll do their best, but also I don't want it to be unfair. I know that it would be unfair if they were like, Danielle's going to get nine tickets and everyone else gets six. But maybe if someone volunteers their tickets, maybe if they don't need their three tickets, I could get them. If not, I told them it's no big deal. I'll split them between week one and week two. I will I honestly, I'd break down in hysterical tears. I would break down in hysterical tears if I go home on week one. So please, I beg of you. Please vote Danielle to two one, five, two three. Yeah. I haven't memorized because you guys have left it in the comments A couple of times. I'm like thanks, So I'm gonna start handing it out to people. I need a business card anyway. Thank you guys for listening to this episode of Danielle with the Stars. It has been a true joy to be dancing and recording this podcast. At the same time, we have some really great guests coming up that I can't wait for you to hear about. And I'm going to be recording my next solo episode before you know it. My next guest is actually Sabrina Brian, a two time competitor on Dancing with the Stars. She competed originally in two thousand and seven and then she was in the All Star season. How do I sign up for an All Star season? When does that happen? Also? How do I sign up for tour? I'm just guys, I'm not gonna be able to do anything else. I don't know if you understand. So while I was at the Emmys, I ran into Whitney Levitt and Jen Affleck. They were also presenting an award. They were presenting an award for Best Hair and Makeup. And it's so fun to run into your fellow Dancing with the Stars competitors at all these different events. It's so nice to see each other outside of our element. Because now our element is workout clothes and in the studio, and we barely get to see each other when we're in the studio because we arrive. Like I told you, there's these three timeframes for rehearsals, so everyone is either arriving around the same time at nine, But then you walk to your room, you stretch, and you're basically locked in your room for the next four hours. But in the in between, like at the you know you rehearse from nine to one. You exit your room at one o'clock. Now all the people who are rehearsing one to five start arriving. There's a little snack area near the bathrooms. Everyone sits and socializes and talks and gives each other hugs and says, how's it going, how are you feeling? What are you doing to take care of yourself? We get pulled into each other's rooms to shoot tiktoks. I helped Whitney and Mark shoot the end of their best friend TikTok that they posted a few days ago, which was really cute. Mark came in just to talk to us. Mark and Pasha are like brothers, so Mark came in before Whitney was there. The other day and just spent about ten minutes chatting with us and telling us about how what his choreography stuff is like, and he said that he's not super fast. He's like I like to be slow and sometimes things change. And you'll hear more about that when you hear my interview with Sabrina Bryan as well, because she talked a lot about how he would occasionally change things and just to her, it just felt like he was comfortable doing that because he knew she could handle it, so it was actually a big vote of confidence for her. Thank you all for listening to this episode of Danielle with the Stars. You can follow us on Instagram Danielle with Stars. Make sure to follow us there like all of our content, and then also check out our dedicated feed for Danielle with the Stars. You can go there and get all of the episodes like and please subscribe and give us a five star review unless you don't like us, in which case, don't leave a review. Just pretend you never heard it. And remember to vote for me on Dancing with the Stars starting September sixteenth and live every Tuesday after that until your votes send me home. So let's keep it going. Tell eleven twenty five people love you, guys, thanks for being here. Danielle with the Stars Produced and hosted by Danielle Fischl. Executive producers Jensen Carp and Amy Sugarman, Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, Producer, editor and engineer Tara Sudbosch. Theme song by Justin Siegel. Follow us on Instagram at Danielle with Stars and vote for me