Gilles Marini needs to relax. The guy is too hard on himself. Even though he and Cheryl Burke scored an impressive 27 for their Viennese waltz on last night's Dancing With the Stars, he can't stop beating himself up over it.
"I keep apologizing to Cheryl because she worked so hard and I worked so hard," Gilles tells me while taking a sauna this morning. (No, I wasn't there! We chatted by phone.) "I just keep saying, What the hell is wrong me?"
Read on to learn why Gilles thinks their waltz wasn't up to par, who made him strip down to a bathing suit for the cameras and why he has to get another cortisone shot.
What did you think of last night?
This is what happened: I messed up my feet. I messed up and I lost complete control of the dance. It should have been the most beautiful Viennese waltz of all time, but I lost control of the dance. I can just die. But we got a pretty good score. We got three nines, which is amazing.
Exactly. Even when you supposedly don't do so well, you're still among the best.
You should have seen our rehearsal. It was like, "Oh, my god we have something beautiful here"…Cheryl says, "We got a great score. It could have been so much worse." The overall dance was beautiful but I feel a little bit s--tty.
What do you think happened?
To tell you the truth, I wasn't in my right place last night. I wasn't really myself. My insides, my emotions were…not negative, but something was disturbing me. I couldn't put my finger on it, but then I think it's a family thing over in France that's really bothering me. That made me a bit sad. I was just down.
OK, whose idea was it to get you in a bathing suit for the cameras? [Gilles and Cheryl's pretaped video showed him rehearsing in a pool with a synchronized swimmer.]
Never my idea! It wasn't even Cheryl's. It was Bob, the producer. Bob said, "You have to jump in the pool." It was zero degrees! It was so cold it wasn't even funny...I didn't want to do it. I was like, "Can we warm the pool up?"
How are you feeling physically?
Beautiful. I'm in a sauna, sweating. But I am going to get a shot on Wednesday, because the lindy hop [next week's dance] is a lot of bouncing around and swinging. I have to get a cortisone shot because, if not, I would not be able to do any of it.