Dancing's Derek Hough: Marilu's Feet Were Killing Her Last Week

Hey everyone!

Thanks for your votes and messages!

Monday night wasn't the best for us, but I'm very proud of Marilu for what she did and pushing through. They didn't show it, but Marilu's feet were killing her last week. It started last Thursday while we were dancing, and Marilu started mentioning that her feet were hurting. There's a lot of hopping in the Charleston and I don't think her feet were used to that. They got progressively worse, so much so that she could literally barely walk down the stairs on show day. She had injections and numbing cream. She tried all these different things to no avail. It was just a combination of things. Her feet hurt, her ribs hurt, she broke out into hives one day.

By the time Monday came around, she was in a lot of pain. When you watch the routine, you can really see she was really timid. That dance was honestly pretty good when we first rehearsed it. We were both really excited about it. Having to do the team dance didn't help either, obviously, and as you saw, she fell over in that. During that move, we were supposed to come together, push off each other, separate, and I kind of guide her. I moved her a little, but if you look closely, she caught her foot and tripped over her feet. I was like, "Are you OK? Are you OK? I'm so sorry." And she was like, "I'm landed on my butt. I'm totally fine!" That is so Marilu. She wasn't like, "Aw, man, I'm so bummed I fell." She was like, "I fell on my butt, I'm good." Somebody said to me afterward, "Derek, you need to calm down. You're literally dragging her." I was like, "Really, guys? Really?"

It is what it is. These things happen, which is OK. We're at the point in the season where the physicality of it all catches up to everyone. I'm kind of surprised it didn't come up on the show. It was a big thing on set last week. I think they'll definitely show it this week because she really was just in agony that entire show.

Marilu's doing a whole lot better now. She took Tuesday off to rest her feet and saw a doctor. Nothing's broken; she just has two bruised bursas. We have the Argentine tango this week and my main goal is to make sure she feels comfortable and to take care of her feet. The first part of the routine I'm gonna try to do in a chair and do some choreography for her there, kind of what I did with Amber Riley when she hurt her knees and I figured out a way to do the beginning of the dance on a table so she could rest her knees. I told her that people's ribs could get sore in the Argentine tango, so she came in with a whole rib brace, which is good. We're being careful.

I don't know what my Halloween costume is going to be in real life, but we're doing a spider theme for the dance. She's a black widow and I get trapped in her web. It's kind of cool the way it starts. We're going to kind of make the web. I went to a fabric store on Tuesday and bought some white elastics and we're going to do this choreography with them.

There's also a dance-off this week, but honestly, I'm not even thinking about it yet. I'm just trying to get this one dance out for her. The dance-off styles are jive, cha-cha and salsa. The good news is we incorporated some salsa in our cha-cha for our "chalsa," so those two would be virtually the same. And the jive was our first dance, so she already knows it as well. I'm planning on just doing minor refreshers on all three of them every day.

I'm currently on the Hairspray set going over my lines. Things are going really well so far. We went to see the set on the backlot. It's so cool to see them build everything. It's really looking great. We've been doing a lot of the performances so fa, so today is my first real day with any scenes. Wish me luck!

Thanks for reading!

Derek