Backstage: Inside Warren and Kym's First Fight
Kym Johnson and Warren Sapp, Dancing with the Stars
If timing is everything, then Warren Sapp may be peaking on Dancing with the Stars at just the right moment. He came in a strong second on Monday night, and he did so despite the fact that he's been dancing with a huge disadvantage: He loses a full day of training every week.
Much has been made of Susan Lucci's harried schedule, flying cross-country every week to do double duty on All My Children. But almost no one mentions that Sapp has been doing the same thing — flying from Los Angeles to Philadelphia every Tuesday on the red eye to tape Showtime's Inside The NFL. "I'm out of L.A. for 23 hours," says Sapp.
And in Sapp's case, his pro partner, Kym Johnson, doesn't go with him — as Tony Dovolani did with Lucci — because there's no point. "Once he gets to the studio," says Johnson, "there's no time to dance, even if we wanted to."
But the pair has survived a few less-than-stellar performances, due in large part to Sapp's charisma and astonishingly light footwork. "Last week, a flop; this week, on top," said Len Goodman, watching him tango on Monday night.
Can they steal the crown from frontrunner Brooke Burke? Maybe, because they have something else going for them: They got their big fight out of the way in the very beginning. It happened on the third day they rehearsed together — more than a month before the show's premiere. Early in the session, Sapp walked out the door, demoralized, believing that Johnson was making fun of him.
"He walked out, and then I walked out," says Johnson. "It isn't rosy all the time and I was pushing him too much." Says Sapp, "It was too early in the morning and I didn't have a good night's rest. And she gave me that laugh that I used to give kids when they were trying to learn something, and I said, 'Well, that was pretty condescending, but I'll let that go.' I didn't know it at the time, but she did it with love. And then I walked out."
Says Johnson, "The funny thing was, he left in his Cuban heels with his shorts on." Sapp returned the next day, but it didn't go any better. "She went at me again, and I said, 'Not that hard!' I said, 'Not before 10!' And then I said to myself, 'I have to be able to accept whatever she's giving me.' That's what I told myself."
Other couples have hit the skids in the last two weeks, when the workload of learning two dances has amped up the pressure and made the physical demands almost impossible. But Sapp and Johnson are sailing along, happy. "The timing of our fight was perfect," says Sapp.
