How Maksim Chmerkovskiy, Vanessa Lachey Bonded Over Emotional Dancing With the Stars Performance

After a week apart, the Dancing duo returned for an emotional performance

By Chris Harnick Oct 10, 2017 4:00 PMTags
Watch: Vanessa Lachey & Maks Chmerkovskiy Dish on Performance

Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Vanessa Lachey reunited on Dancing With the Stars for Vanessa's Most Memorable Year dance. The two, who did not dance together last week, did a rumba to Nick Lachey's "Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)." They received a 24 out of 30 from the judges. Despite the headlines, the pair went right to work.

"You have the live show on Monday and Tuesday you start rehearsal, and so we started a new week with a new song and a new dance and I was excited to learn the rumba from this guy because he's like the rumba king. I mean, you've got those hips," Vanessa said about Maks after the show. "I've got to keep up with those hips. It actually threw my back out a couple of times, I didn't tell you that."

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Vanessa picked 2016, the year her son Phoenix was born, and opened up about the struggles she had with the pregnancy that ended with emergency surgery. She praised Maks for matching her vision.

"Shai [Maks' son with Peta Murgatroyd] and Phoenix are literally two weeks apart and you need that emotion to go through this because it's not an easy process," Vanessa said. "And then the professionalism that I get from such a great teacher and I just want to learn because I want to do justice to Nick's song, which we danced to. Hearing Nick sing and then I'm doing this dance and then seeing the package, it was a mess. But I had a great support—literally, physical support system to hold me up…"

Maks told us the highly emotional week was not the week to have anything get in the way of the dance.

"The point is to have this platform, to be given this platform to represent something that a lot of people go through and you get to speak for millions of families…Vanessa's story is such a—I hate to say it—every day occurrence for new moms out there. It's so important to know there are people who go through this, get to come out, get to shine, there's no room for anything other than this is the point," he said.

Dancing With the Stars airs Mondays, 8 p.m. on ABC.