Cheryl Burke is going to let Joey Graziadei finish, but thinks another Dancing With the Stars season 33 finalist had one of the best series runs of all time.
“Let’s talk about Ilona Maher, she’s the true star, right?” Burke said on a recent episode of her Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans podcast. Maher, an Olympic rugby player, finished in second place alongside partner Alan Bersten behind Bachelor alum Graziadei and pro Jenna Johnson.
Burke agreed with guest Breanne Heldman from PEOPLE that Joey “won fair and square,” but conceded to Heldman’s point that “this is not a show where necessarily the best dancer wins.” Not only did Maher acquit herself as the best celebrity dancer on the season in Burke’s eyes, her charisma and quick wit prompted the former DWTS pro to say, “don’t you think after that monologue she did for the opening of her freestyle, she should be on SNL?”
Burke has a strong leg to stand on when it comes to judging Dancing With the Stars. A trained professional dancer herself, she participated in 26 seasons of the long-running reality competition series, taking home the gold twice.
Derek Hough, another former pro on the series who now sits on its judging panel alongside Carrie Ann Inaba and Bruno Tonioli, may have won three times as many golds as Burke, but Burke has displayed a uniquely incisive eye for gameplay and technique on her podcast. She even predicted Graziadei’s win on a previous episode, though both Maher and third-place runner-up Chandler Kinney were tipped by many to win.
“Joey and Jenna I was most excited about,” Burke said, reflecting on her anticipation of the couples’ final dances. “I wanted them to come out like Cyd Charisse, do a really old school – their own vibe honestly, not to mimic their choreograpy – but that type would have killed it, would have brought the house down.”
Instead, Joey and Jenna danced a tennis-themed freestyle that left Burke wanting more. “Tennis is very redundant. You hit the ball, you hit the ball back. There’s not much we can do here,” she said.
Maher, meanwhile, dedicated her freestyle to the girls watching at home who’d been told they’re too big or muscular. She cycled through multiple costume changes as she danced with Bersten through a locker room into the ballroom. The couple were given a perfect score of 30, while Joey and Jenna earned a near-perfect 29.
It was Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin actress Chandler Kinney and her partner Brandon Armstrong who received the night’s only perfect score of 60 across two dances.
“I do believe that Chandler coming in third was harsh,” Burke said, agreeing with Heldman that Kinney was likely technically the best dancer. But Burke maintained that Graziadei “was fantastic,” which is especially impressive, given that “he has no dance experience, this guy. He just was good from the get go.”