Dancing With the Stars season 14: heavy on the celebrities, light on the shirts.
The ABC hit reality show just announced its roster of stars set to shake their money-makers in an attempt to win the coveted mirror-ball tropy, and we were lucky enough to chat with the 12 celebrities at the cast announcement. One thing they all made abundantly clear? They're not afraid to lose their shirts in the name of votes! Yes ladies, you can expect to see actor Jack Wagner, NFL star Donald Driver and more sans shirts...including Jaleel White aka Steve Urkel, TV's most iconic nerd!
Plus, who was called the "ugliest" contestant ever? Will Sherri Shepherd take a break from The View for DWTS? And will White bust out the suspenders and glasses in the ballroom?
Wagner is fully prepared to show a little skin for DWTS, even if it's orange. "I have no problem with shirtlessness or spray-tanning," he says. "I'm ready." Driver is also game to take his shirt off: "I'm not wearing anything that's see-through," he laughs. "I might as well take it off!"
Of her partner, telenovela star William Levy (who was unable to make it to the announcement), Cheryl Burke jokes, "He's so ugly. He's the ugliest person we've ever had on the show. It's such a shame." Burke reveals she has a game plan: "If he can't dance, I'm going to have to end up ripping his clothes off." Works for us!
Someone else who is eager to get her partner's clothes off? Shepherd. who asked pro Val Chmerkovskiy "'When are you going to take your shirt off?'" as soon as they met. Kym Johnson will also be getting her partner's shirt off if she has any say in the matter. "He's got abs!" she says of White. "He's built!"
Fans of The View can rest assured that Shepherd's filming schedule will not be impacted by her DWTS duties. "I'm still cohosting The View...[I'll] take a red-eye out [Tuesday night] and I do three shows in New York then I get back on a plane," she explains. "It's a little bit of a challenge, but I'm certainly up to it. Barbara Walters has taught me well on how to do more than one job!"
Shepherd may be this season's busiest celeb, but Driver definitely takes the title of most competitive, saying, "I've been watching the show since season one. I've always said that if I ever got on the show I would win it. You never think you'll get invited...It's something special for me and something I really want to do."
The two most nervous competitors? Gladys Knight and Maria Menounos. "I don't have a song or a mic, so that puts me out of my comfort zone," Knight admits to us, while Menounos says one of the first things she said to her partner Derek Hough was, "'I think I might throw up on you. I'm so nervous!' This is completely not my thing!"
After White's name was announced, everyone had one question: will he pay homage to his infamous Family Matters character Steve Urkel? "I doubt that I'm going to go to any cliché place, but if there's any way I can pay an homage, I will," White tells us. "I want people to know I'm tongue-in-cheek about it. I tell people all the time, I'm going through my Captain Kirk years."
While Steve Urkel may be a household name, Johnson actually had to Google her partner after meeting him! "I knew the Steve Urkel character, obviously, but I hadn't really watched much of the show," she explains. "I felt really bad actually, but he hadn't really watched anything of Dancing! We actually went home and Googled each other!"
To hear more from DWTS' new cast, watch our interviews above—then head on down to the comments to tell us who you think will win this season!