Dancing With the Stars' Louis van Amstel is ready to make amends with Kate Gosselin after saying she "needs a psychologist."
"I want to apologize to Kate. I really do. She grew on all of us so much," van Amstel (who scored a 21 out of 30 on his samba with partner Niecy Nash Monday night) told UsMagazine.com backstage after the show.
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"What I was meaning to say is that dance is like therapy," he explained. "It's such a great way to use movement without having to talk about it — just move and go to a certain place. That's what I said and that was what Kate needed."
Van Amstel, 37, says "it was hard" for Gosselin, 35, to hear criticism from the judges. Bruno Tonioli slammed her for moving on the dance floor like a "shopping cart."
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"And the way she coped with it was really good," he says. "It's a shame that she couldn't be here long enough to really show people at home.
Added Nash, 40, "A lot of people didn't really get that Kate wanted to be here — it didn't translate on camera. But we saw it a lot backstage — she really did want to be here. Finding a way to break through so that the audience got it was, I think, where she struggled."
Nash empathizes with Gosselin, who left her eight kids at their $1.1 million Pennsylvania home to commute back and forth to the Los Angeles DWTS studio once a week.
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"I got three kids, honey, and I'm struggling to get out of the house — if I had eight I would want to stay and be the last woman standing!" she said. "It's difficult — it's not an easy thing."
