Showing support! Sailor Brinkley-Cook praised her mom, Christie Brinkley, for how she handled the comments Wendy Williams made about the supermodel’s sudden departure from Dancing With the Stars.
“I was super proud of her, especially because she really stood her ground,” Brinkley-Cook, 21, told Us Weekly exclusively on Monday, September 23. “She spoke the truth. Wendy really has supported her through a lot of crazy stuff and for her to come out and say something negative about this situation really was shocking. Like I was like, ‘Really?’”
The season 28 contestant noted that “whoever spews hatred needs more love,” adding: “So, love you, Wendy!”
Brinkley announced her exit from DWTS’ current season on September 16, which was also the 28th season’s premiere date. On Instagram, she revealed she broke her “arm into a 1000 pieces, requiring surgery with a metal plate and screws to hold my arm together.” In the social post, Brinkley also confirmed her daughter would replace her and partner with pro dancer Val Chmerkovskiy.
After footage of the injury was aired on Good Morning America that day, Williams provided her take during The Wendy Williams Show. The Ask Wendy author suggested the video clip of the injury “looked fake as hell” before speculating that Brinkley “signed up knowing that she [would] put her daughter in there.”
“What I see is a 65-year-old hot stuff who looks like if you were going to fracture anything, you should have said the tailbone,” Williams, 55, said. “I don’t see a wrist and a shoulder being fractured, but that was real cute.”
Brinkley responded to Williams’ remarks on The Talk on September 19. She asked for the talk show host to “be kind,” while adding: “Try it. It can’t feel good to try to hurt other people. If it feels good, something’s seriously wrong.”
In the wake Williams’ criticism, Brinkley told Us how “proud” she was of her Parsons grad daughter for stepping in to replace her. “She rose above her own fears to do something for me, you know, because she knew that that would cushion the blow of this crushing, truly crushing disappointment,” she explained on September 17. “Sailor picks up where my message left off because she’s certainly not my age, but she was letting things hold her back and now she’s not.”
Since joining DWTS, Brinkley-Cook survived the first week of the competition after she and Chmerkovskiy performed a foxtrot to Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl.” They then executed a rumba to “Señorita” by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello during Monday’s episode.
Brinkley-Cook told Us the best advice she has received from her mom is “to have fun with everything.”
“People take life way too seriously and if you do that, you ruin, you ruin the fun of it,” she explained to Us on Monday. “You’ve ruined the beauty of life. So I really just try and laugh through everything that I do.”
Dancing With the Stars airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
With reporting by Kayley Stumpe
