Dancing with the Stars professional Karina Smirnoff was nervous when she found out the guest judge on the show this week would be her ex-fiancé Maksim Chmerkovskiy, but she was pleasantly surprised at how nice he was.
Chmerkovskiy judged calmly and fairly for all the contestants, especially his ex-fiancé and her partner Corbin Bleu. He and Smirnoff were engaged from December 2008 to September 2009 before they broke up.
"He did a superb job," Smirnoff told People. "He's been on our side as a dancer. He knows how much work we put in and how many hours of rehearsals it takes. I was looking forward to him being the Maks that we all know who doesn't have a lot of filter, but he was actually very nice. I don't know [why he was being nice], but I liked it. I'll take that Maks over the other Maks any day."
In fact, the 35-year-old didn't let Maks get in her head at all while performing. "What's really funny is you can't hear anything in the ballroom," she explained. "When we get on the floor, people start screaming, and at that point, we're like two racehorses. We're in the zone. So, ex-fiancé, current fiancé – none of that got in my head."
It turned out that Chmerkovskiy actually had very nice things to say to Smirnoff, and after their second dance, he even told Bleu, "I think you have a huge advantage in this competition. You have what I consider to be Top 5 best female dancers of all time." Following this comment, Smirnoff ran up and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
"He had such a sweet comment, and I didn’t know what else to do," she told US Weekly. "I was like, that’s so sweet. Should I give him a kiss?"
Smirnoff and Bleu are headed into the DWTS finals next week. Chmerkovskiy is currently dating Sport's Illustrated model Kate Upton.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
