Julianne Hough has achieved success both on and off the ballroom floor. She first gained fame as a champion on “Dancing with the Stars” and later took on roles as a judge and host, making her a household name in the United States. However, like many in Hollywood, she has also been associated with controversy that has at times overshadowed her achievements. From controversial portrayals of TV characters to contentious moments as a judge on the country’s biggest dance competition series, she has garnered both positive and negative attention. In a 2023 interview with CNN, she acknowledged the complexity of life, stating, “There’s a spectrum of light and dark and happy and sad, and it’s constantly moving.” As she continues to broaden her scope in the entertainment industry, her occasional involvement in drama may be a recurring aspect of her career.
She criticized a Mirrorball champion from Dancing with the Stars
Julianne Hough has been involved with “Dancing with the Stars” on and off since she first became a Pro Dancer on the show in 2007. She eventually made her way to the judging table and began serving as co-host of the show alongside former Mirrorball champion Alfonso Ribiero in 2023. But throughout all of her positions on the show, her dancing roots have not been far behind her, and she’s been brutally honest about a number of the contestants over the years.
One of those contestants was former Mirrorball champion and popular radio host Bobby Bones, who Hough questioned as to why he won his season. “I think it’s because of the fan base, right?” she spilled on “Watch What Happens Live” (via E! News). “It’s all about fan base on that show. He was not the best dancer,” Bones, for his part, hit back at the claim by (jokingly) defending his dancing prowess. “I was the worst dancer. I take pride in that,” he shared on Instagram. “But you know who took down the big evil empire of dance? Well, it’s not evil or an empire, but me and you! We did it together.”
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She’s called out her Dancing with the Stars colleagues
It’s not just contestants that Julianne Hough has called out on “Dancing with the Stars” — she’s also taken aim at her fellow dancing pros. While serving as a guest judge on the show in 2013, Hough criticized fellow dancer (and childhood friend) Mark Ballas after his performance with celebrity partner Christina Milian. “I really wanted to see you shine,” she told Milian (per Entertainment Weekly) before throwing some shade at Ballas. “[I’ve] danced with Mark. You have to stand in front to make sure you’re seen.” Ballas responded to the comments in an interview with EW after the episode, saying, “She put a little sting on me, but that’s okay. That’s how she felt. It is what it is.”
Hough has also come after Maksim Chmerkovskiy, who is notoriously as ill-tempered as he is proficient on the floor. Serving as a guest judge in 2014, she questioned Chmerkovskiy’s choreography when he danced with a different partner that week. “I felt like it was a little bit like, this week could get past so that you could be back with [current partner] Meryl (Davis), and you just had to phone it in (with McKellar),” she said during the telecast (via NJ.com). Chmerkovskiy’s reaction was none too pleased. “It felt like she just said something, didn’t think it through, then started talking over herself,” he shared on “Good Morning America” (via ABC News). “So it wasn’t well thought out … Julianne has my number, whenever she wants to call and apologize, I’m ready.”
She’s been accused of diva behavior on set
Even when the cameras are off, Julianne Hough has reportedly exhibited some high and mighty behavior. At the December 2023 season finale of “Dancing with the Stars,” Hough showcased diva-like tendencies in between her hosting segments. “The glam team rushed up to the hosts to make sure they were camera-ready for each take,” a reported insider revealed to The U.S. Sun. “Julianne had four to six hair, makeup and wardrobe people around her at any given time. They were making sure she looked perfect and kept fixing her sparkly high boots so they wouldn’t fall down.”
But the diva behavior didn’t stop then. During the next season, in early 2024, Hough continued to act in a less-than-modest way behind the scenes. “Julianne is so full of herself and producers realize they have another diva on their hands,” another insider reportedly shared with the National Enquirer (via RadarOnline). “She acts like she’s above it all. The problem is that no one thinks she’s as great as she thinks she is, and viewers say she has a fake smile.”
She body shamed a Dancing with the Stars contestant
Julianne Hough has taken things too far with not only her fellow dance pros but even with contestants while judging on “Dancing with the Stars.” After Hough remarked that she was “uncomfortable” watching curvaceous celebrity contestant Amber Rose dance with partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy, Rose took to both her personal podcast and the show itself to address the comments. “When she said that, it made me feel very embarrassed, very uncomfortable,” Rose revealed to Extra after the live show. “… [I wondered] what made her uncomfortable? Because that’s not fair … The professional dancers, she never says anything …”
After Rose addressed the comments on the next live show, even apologizing to the judge if she had taken her critiques out of context, Hough tried to clarify her side of things. “The thing I love so much about dance is that it’s a universal platform for people to express themselves,” she said during the telecast (via Page Six). ” Any person — whether that is age, height, body shape, ethnicity or sexual orientation — it is something that people can express themselves to do … As a judge, I’m here to solely judge you and everyone in this competition for only the dancing.”
She’s a self-professed harsh judge on Dancing with the Stars
Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s her years as a professional dancer, but either way, Julianne Hough has been known to be rather harsh while serving as a judge on “Dancing with the Stars.” “You can always count on me to tell the truth,” she shared with ABC News in 2014. “It’s all about making comments that whoever the dancer or celebrity is, they can be better for next week. There’s never any harsh criticism just because I want to be harsh, that’s not my nature or my character.”
That criticism has applied to contestants and dancers alike, but all the while, Hough has maintained her stance on pursuing excellence in the sport. Furthermore, Hough has kept to her laurels as a truth-teller, both as a judge and a host of the hit show, and fans of the show have been quick to call her out when she goes too far. “Julianne’s means comments to [celebrity contestant] Charity [Lawson] are not professional,” one user on X (formerly Twitter) posted in November 2023 when Hough, as host, asked Lawson if she was “ready to go home” after placing in the middle of the ranks the week before (via The U.S. Sun). “She sucks! Stop with the bad energy.”
She feuded with her own brother and spoke about it in the press
Julianne Hough’s harsh side has even come out in fights with her family, including her brother and fellow dance pro, Derek Hough. “Make no mistake, it’s always been highly competitive between those two,” an insider shared with Life & Style in 2024 (via Yahoo! Entertainment). “When one of their careers is going better than the other — honestly I think Derek would rather be a host … than a judge, but Julianne got the gig — jealousies arise and there’s been bad blood between them in the past.”
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But despite their differences and potential envies, Julianne has revealed that the two have been able to come together when it matters the most. After Derek’s wife, fellow “Dancing with the Stars” pro Hayley Erbert, fell gravely ill in December 2023, Julianne shared that the siblings swept aside their issues to come together for their family. “Something happens and it just is like a clean slate,” Hough told People. “There could have been little things just kind of looming or lingering in the background, but when you’re left with life-or-death situations, nothing else matters. Whatever little things of competition there are or whatever it might be, those things just go away.”
She’s worn blackface before
Even off the dance floor, Julianne Hough has landed herself in hot water for making questionable decisions. One of her most egregious errors in judgment came in 2013 when she donned blackface makeup while portraying the character of Crazy Eyes from “Orange Is the New Black” for Halloween. Hough was quick to apologize on X, but the media (and the public) have kept tabs on Hough ever since.
Old feelings arose when it was announced in 2021 that Hough would participate in the now-defunct reality show “The Activist,” which was criticized online for being tone deaf, and subsequently brought the blackface controversy back into the limelight. “Wearing blackface was a poor choice based on my own white privilege and white body bias that hurt people and is something that I regret doing to this day,” Hough wrote on Instagram. “My commitment has been to reflect and act differently. Not perfectly, but hopefully with a more developed understanding that racism and white supremacy is harmful to ALL people.”
She outed another actor as gay
In another poor judgment call moment, Julianne Hough once outed actor Jonathan Bennett (of “Mean Girls”) as gay during a television interview. In 2014, she revealed Bennett’s sexual orientation while discussing a conversation she had with him with Extra’s Mario Lopez. “He tweeted at me last year and said I had a nice butt, and I thought, ‘Oh he’s hitting on me — I should try to go on a date with him!’” she shared on the show (via Hollywood Life). “He’s gay — so I was like, ‘That’s not gonna work!’”
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While Bennett never publicly addressed the incident outright, he did eventually share his life as a gay man with the public and has since continued to work in Hollywood. Ironically, Hough herself also came out as “not straight” in 2019 (per Women’s Health). “Coming out is one of the most vulnerable and empowering things that you can do,” she shared on “The Jamie Kern Lima” show in 2024 (via People). “I was starting to see people and seeing their hearts and seeing their beauty and their essence coming through in a way that I was like, ‘Wow, I love people.’”