Alexa and Carlos PenaVega claim their Dancing With the Stars journey was rife with drama between their respective pro partners Mark Ballas and Witney Carson.
“There’s a lot of drama behind the scenes. At the time, Witney and Mark were not getting along at all,” Alexa, 38, alleged on the Thursday, October 22, episode of the couple’s “LexLos” podcast. “They refused to be in the same room together.”
Alexa and Carlos, 37, were the first married couple to compete against one another in the DWTS ballroom back in 2015.
“[Witney and Mark’s alleged feud] was really hard because we’re married and the whole point of doing the show was, ‘We’re gonna do this together as much as possible,” Alexa recalled. “The second we go in, boom, ‘Mark and Witney refuse to be in a room together.’”
She continued, “We thought we’d be rehearsing in the same room and now we have to be so separate. We have to dance around whatever’s going on with them.”
Neither Ballas, 40, nor Carson, 33, have publicly addressed the accusations. Us has reached out to reps for DWTS and both pro dancers for comment.
As for the PenaVegas, they found their pros’ apparent beef to be “hard” to navigate while still trying to learn how to ballroom dance.
“Witney, her and I had so much fun. … I was there to win, [but] Mark was there to win,” Carlos claimed on Thursday’s episode. “He’s very creative and he wants to do things outside the box, which requires a lot of work. Listen, I had a great work ethic with Witney [and] she put up with a lot ‘cause it was really hard, but we had a lot of fun.”
Alexa, who noted that she had also had fun with Ballas, thought Carlos had an upper hand when it came to learning the basic moves.
“When it comes to dance, you pick things up so easily, like, Carlos, they would teach him something and he would know it immediately,” the Spy Kids actress noted of her spouse, noting she often needed longer rehearsal time. “He would learn a dance and it would be so good right away, and even if he messed up, you would never know he messed up because he doesn’t [say anything], he just slides into [the next step]. It was so easy. It looked so easy for you.”
Alexa added, “Meanwhile, it took me forever. Mark would teach me something, I would be like, ‘Got it,’ and I would have it and then an hour later, I’d be like, ‘I actually don’t have any of that.’”
Alexa and Ballas finished in sixth place, while the Big Time Rush singer and Carson made it all the way to the finale before ultimately losing to Bindi Irwin and Derek Hough.
