Say it ain’t so! Longtime Dancing With the Stars pro Val Chmerkovskiy has said that season 30 may be his last, but his fellow cast members hope that’s not the case.
After finishing season 30 in eighth place with his partner, Olivia Jade Giannulli, the Ukrainian dancer said that he was thinking about moving on to other projects.
“I’ve always been very clear about coming back on the show. I love the show. I love being on it. I am so grateful for the opportunity. Is this my last season? Probably,” he told Entertainment Tonight in November 2021. “I have no regrets about my tenure on the show. I have no regrets about the season. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner to end it with.”
Several months earlier, the U.S. National Latin Dance champion exclusively told Us Weekly that he was satisfied with his position on the show, which premiered in June 2005. “I like the role that I’m in,” he said in July 2021. “I like what I’m doing. I’m about to host 19 cities on a tour on my own terms.”
He acknowledged that his work with DWTS was hard, but at the time, he said that the difficulties were just a reminder that he’s living his dream. “We have 12-hour days where my whole body’s exhausted,” he explained. “I’m exhausted, and I love every single ache and just every single part of it. That’s when I realized, I truly am in Zen. This is what I meant to do. This is what I love to do.”
The dance pro’s older brother, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, officially left the show in April 2018 after finishing season 25 in seventh place with partner Vanessa Lachey. “Listen, I love the show, but I have other interests at the moment. I would have loved to judge and transition into that, but it’s not my call,” he told MassLive at the time. “I just don’t think I can do the show as a professional dancer at 100 percent and give it my all anymore. I am at a different point in my life.”
The former Broadway star welcomed his first child with wife Peta Murgatroyd in January 2017. “I think I’m just going to be the sideline mascot bringing babies to see their parents do their thing,” Maks told Us in May 2020, referencing his future with DWTS. “I’ll be that person.”
Val, for his part, has been married to fellow DWTS pro Jenna Johnson since April 2019. They don’t yet have any children, but Johnson previously told Us that the duo are definitely considering it. “I want kids,” the Utah native said in September 2020. “I want babies. Val wants babies very badly. We definitely have spoken about it. That’s our future. That’s what we want when that’s gonna happen.”
Keep scrolling to see everything the DWTS cast has said about Val potentially leaving the show: