In addition to Dancing With the Stars, which unveils its all-new cast tonight, Maksim Chmerkovskiy starred as The Bachelor in his native Ukraine.
Boy is he regretting that decision now.
Give him terrible tendinitis, put him in front of Len Goodman on his most crotchety day, even partner him with Kate Gosselin. Just get him on the floor.
“It was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done,” Maksim says of being The Bachelor. “If I knew then what I know now, I would never have signed up.”
The ballroom dancer is not one to shy away from the attention of beautiful women, but Chmerkovskiy admits he may not have done his homework.
“I had never seen it,” he says of The Bachelor. “I still knew what it was about. In theory you think you can do it, but you cannot realize how difficult it is.”
Looking for love while being followed by cameras is one thing, but what Maks was not prepared for is that at seemingly every turn, he broke hearts.
“The fact that I had to choose people was something else,” Chmerkovskiy said.
“People should never be lined up and chosen. We’re not objects and not supposed to be lined up like that. It’s terrible, it’s like I was back in high school.”
So did he dole out a final rose? He won’t say, but Maks notes that being the Ukrainian Bachelor had a unexpected perk that may have changed his life.
“There was a psychiatrist on staff who I ended up speaking to everyday, and it was so therapeutic,” he says. “It wasn’t that I had issues to fix, but talking to a professional everyday really helped a lot, so that was an amazing experience.”
That’s good. Brad Womack can most likely attest to the same thing.
Speaking of, read The Bachelor spoilers here to see who Brad picks!
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