Whitney Leavitt got emotional following her recent elimination from Dancing With the Stars season 34.
“I am just gonna speak from the heart and share what I’m feeling. I share the good, I share the bad, I share the ugly, so I’m just gonna keep doing that,” the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star, 32, said in a Thursday, November 20, TikTok video. “When you’re cast on Dancing With the Stars, you are seeing these people [for] hours every single day. Then it just stops. It genuinely feels like a breakup. It feels like I’m going through withdrawals right now.”
Leavitt was eliminated from the ABC dance competition show during the Tuesday, November 18, episode. She and partner Mark Ballas, who were frontrunners on the judges’ leaderboard, were one week away from making it to the finale.
“Today just felt so weird. It felt so weird not going into the studio and meeting with Mark and learning a dance,” she continued while getting visibly upset. “It just felt weird and it made me sad.”
While fighting back tears, Leavitt shared that she got to “grow real friendships” and make “real connections” with her fellow competitors.
“You learn so much about yourself, and people have uplifted you constantly,” she reflected. “And you challenge yourself like you just feel so loved.”
On top of learning new dances every week, Leavitt also shared her “key takeaways” from her time in the competition.
“It’s so important to surround yourself with people who believe in you, who want to see you achieve your delusional dreams, as cheesy as that sounds,” she said while crying. “Mark is that friend to me. I will forever be so grateful for that friendship.”
While Leavitt “loved performing on that stage” and “wearing the costumes” for her dances, she never thought she’d leave with such a strong bond with Ballas.
“I loved every bit of [the experience], but the one thing that I have loved the most that I wasn’t expecting was getting a lifelong friend,” she continued. “A friend who makes fart noises every single day. I’m just so grateful.”
Leavitt concluded her video by sharing the same sentiment that she did in her final episode.
“I love you guys, I f***ing love this show,” she said.
Jordan Chiles, Robert Irwin, Alix Earle, Dylan Efron and Elaine Hendrix will compete for a chance to take home the Len Goodman Mirrorball Trophy in the finale next week.
Leavitt’s exit from the show comes shortly after she revealed during a Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season 3 confessional that she returned to the reality show just to have a chance to audition for DWTS.
Dancing With the Stars airs on ABC and Disney+ Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET, with new episodes streaming the next day on Hulu.
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