Selma Blair exits ‘Dancing With the Stars’ due to MS complications: ‘I can’t go on’
Dancing With The Stars has been a success on primetime television. But despite its unprecedented ratings, the reality competition show may be forced to cancel its fall finale at the end of the year, sources have told News 4.
The series, which airs Monday through Thursday on ABC, has received over 20 million viewers annually, making it ABC’s most watched prime time show. While the series is currently in the top 10 among total viewers, the program has not been as viewed as Dancing with the Stars Live from the Staples Center in Los Angeles, which has averaged 20 million viewers per telecast.
“I can’t go on,” Selma Blair, who was a contestant on the show in season eight, has told News 4’s Robin Meade.
Blair, who has MS, told News 4 that the series has been a healing and fulfilling experience for her—one she said she wouldn’t trade for anything. It also has given her a renewed sense of hope and life, she said.
“A lot of people tell you that they don’t want you to be able to do something, but then it turns out to make your life better,” Blair said. “It’s given me hope again. It’s given me a purpose in life, which is something I wasn’t sure would happen again.”
Blair, 42, said she decided to enter the competition to share her story and “to say that there are real people, not just on TV, who have been dealt with like me.”
Blair said she would “always be there for [her] fans” as long as she could, but the series has created a number of challenges, she said.
“It’s taken [her] out of school for a while, and it’s caused some kind of loss of family and friends that I care about the most and that I wanted to do everything I could to be part of society again,” she said.
When asked what she would have done differently, Blair said she would have never entered the competition—but she would have taken her medication, if it had helped.
Blair, who has a doctor who is involved with MS along with her family, has a daily blood test that she takes to monitor her disease.
“If it had made a difference, if it was a small change, then that’s