Tamar Braxton was so ill when she dashed to the Dancing With the Stars studio on Monday, Nov. 9, to dance the final number and avoid elimination, that dance partner Nick Carter had to literally hold her up.
Braxton, 38, made a dramatic and triumphant return to DWTS just in time to perform a Cirque du Soleil number from the Beatles' Love alongside her pro partner, Val Chmerkovskiy, and fellow contestant Carter and his partner, Sharna Burgess. The group managed to score an impressive 27 out of 30, thanks in part to her bravery and resilience at even being there at all.
But talking after the show, Braxton's partner Carter, 35, revealed the whole dance had been very challenging for the entire group, who were already a few rehearsal's down due to the Grammy nominated singer's hospitalization with pneumonia.
"There was a moment right before when she came out, a minute before we were going to perform and Val actually came to me and said, 'Listen, everything aside, I need you to be a lead man tonight and I need you to protect her and take care of her,'" Carter told Us Weekly.
"She was unstable," he explained. "So on top of everything else I needed to know and didn't learn because of our lack of rehearsals, I had to really put her first and assume that responsibility and really just kind of make sure that she was taken care of," he added.
"That was really my most proud moment of the entire season," Carter's pro partner Burgess added. "Seeing how Nick took care of Tamar — even at the end he was like, 'I've got you,' and had her sit down on his knee."
"And in the very beginning, when Tamar didn't do a little part of the choreography, he said, 'Okay I'm going to go with you,'" she added.
"He did what she did. That is truly a leading man, taking care of you in that process, and I am so incredibly proud of him, proud of her, I'm proud of us as a team."
