Strictly Come Dancing 2019 professional Anton Du Beke, 53, is partnered up with EastEnders actress Emma Barton, 42, this series.
Last weekend, the dancing duo’s Rumba left judges Shirley Ballas, Motsi Mabuse, Bruno Tonioli and Craig Revel Horwood divided with their comments.
The most negative comment was made by the latter, who said their routine “lacked fire and lacked passion,” referring to Emma’s moves as a “bag of potatoes”.
Strictly: It Takes Two host Rylan Clark-Neal asked Anton what he made of the comment from Craig.
He replied: “It’s very difficult actually, what happens is, you come off from the dance… you know as a professional whether it was any good or not.”
He then jokingly held on to Emma and said: “And you’ll say to your partner, ‘You’re marvellous,’ and you’re lying, let’s be honest, you know you’re lying.”
Anton went on to explain that if he believed the performance was terrible, he’d purposely delay time for the judges to critique.
He explained: “If it’s terrible, I tend to delay the walk to the judges. If it’s a shocker, you know they’ve only got an allocated amount of time to speak.
“So to delay… bow… if you see me bowing relentlessly it was a shocker.”
Turning to Emma, he demonstrated his motives and said: “‘Oh how marvellous, don’t go yet’ and then you walk over and they’ve [the judges] only got a couple of seconds left.
“But, when it’s quite good, and you know if it feels ok, which I thought it did, it felt super, I liked all of it.”
In the same chat, Anton Du Beke joked the judges “can’t see” the dancers perform as he admitted he disagreed with their negative comments last weekend.
Despite the judges critique, the dancing duo avoided the dreaded dance-off and are through to this week’s Halloween special show.
In their upcoming performance, Anton and Emma will dance a Paso Doble to Nothing Breaks Like A Heart by Mark Ronson featuring Miley Cyrus.
Yesterday, Emma’s former EastEnders co-star Kellie Shirley, 38, spoke about her pal’s performance during an interview with Lorraine Kelly.
She said: “I think it’s really hard. Especially Em’s and her schedule at EastEnders.
“I know they’ve spoken about it but it is brutal and at the moment they’re filming all of the Christmas episodes.
“I think she’s in quite a lot. So to try and learn the choreography each week I think is tough.”
On the judges’ comments, she went on to say: “She is a perfectionist and she’s really loving it and I think they were hard on her this week.”
Strictly Come Dancing continues Saturday at 6.35pm on BBC One.