Danielle Fishel had two of her biggest supporters in the ballroom for Dancing With the Stars’ Halloween Night in her young sons.
“They were here for premiere night and they had the time of their lives, and I kept waiting for them to be like, ‘Mommy, can we come back and see you?’ And then they didn’t,” Fishel, 44, exclusively told Us Weekly after the Tuesday, October 28, live show. “They were just like, ‘All right, have fun. See you later.’ And then they were like, ‘Mom, for Halloween, can we come to the show?’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’ So my 4-year-old dressed as Freddy Krueger and my oldest dressed as a ninja and they came and watched tonight.”
Fishel shares sons Adler, 6, and Keaton, 4, with her husband, Jensen Karp, who all sat in the front row for her murder mystery-inspired Viennese waltz to Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile.” Fishel and her pro partner, Pasha Pashkov, earned a 33 out of 40 from the judges.
As Fishel ended the routine covered in fake blood, she made sure to give her boys a heads-up about the gory details.
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“They didn’t get spooked, but right before we started rehearsing, a little bit before we went out there, I did think, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to warn them that Pasha basically tackles me in this dance,’” the Boy Meets World alum recalled to Us on Tuesday night. “They love Pasha. I [had] to warn them, ‘By the way, it’s going to look like Pasha tackles me, but it’s all fake.’”
She continued, “They love wrestling, so they understood. We were like, ‘It’s like wrestling. It’s choreographed. Mommy’s in on it. It doesn’t hurt me.’ And they were, like, [giving me a] thumbs up.”
The judges — Carrie Ann Inaba, Derek Hough, Bruno Tonioli and guest Cheryl Burke — gave Fishel and Pashkov, 39, three eights and one nine for their waltz. The pair later got two additional bonus points after the dance marathon relay.
“Last week, we got nines and we weren’t really going for nines. We just were trying to do our best with that specific song and that style and that dance, and we ended up getting nine,” Pashkov told Us of their scores. “So, same thing [this week.] We’re just going to commit. We have an amazing song, [and] we’re very excited about the style and the song. We’re just going to commit and hopefully that will manifest into some 10s.”
Fishel, for her part, is also focused on improving her technique with each new routine.
“I, every week, try to pick a couple of things that I’m going to improve on,” she said. “When you have zero dance experience and you come into the show, if you were to take all of the things that you have to learn and to improve on and try to do them all every single week, you would just be completely overwhelmed and the dances would look like a mess. So, last week I had something very specific I was working on, and next week I’m going to take their feedback [into our next] style of dance.”
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Fishel and Pashkov will return for DWTS’ Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Night on Tuesday, November 4, where they will perform a solo number and participate in a team dance.
“I think the style of dance we have is actually perfect for some of the notes they gave,” Fishel teased of her next routine. “So [it’s] another opportunity to take what they said and really implement it and show them that we can do it.”
Dancing With the Stars airs on ABC and Disney+ Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET, with new episodes streaming the next day on Hulu.
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