DWTS Season 35 Premiere: One Couple Topped the Leaderboard — but Fans Say Another Stole the Night

The first night of Dancing With the Stars Season 35 looked ready to give viewers a simple answer to one question: who was already ahead of everyone else? But before the leaderboard could settle anything, the premiere produced a problem — and then three performances made those numbers much harder to read.

The Season 35 premiere arrived on September 15 with eight male celebrities taking to the ballroom first. By the end of the night, a single point would inspire one of the biggest debates of the episode, while the first elimination would make the leaderboard look very different.

An Old DWTS Debate Was Waiting Before the First Scores

Even before the celebrities stepped onto the floor, Season 35 had already revived one of the show’s longest-running arguments. Should someone with serious dance experience really be competing against people learning almost everything from scratch?

This year’s cast includes Harry Shum Jr., Jenna Dewan, and Julia Stiles, all of whom came into the show with notable performance backgrounds. The discussion around experienced contestants had therefore started well before anyone received a 7, 6, or 5.

Carrie Ann Inaba pointed out that experience in jazz, hip-hop, or another style does not simply transfer into ballroom. Different weight placement, posture, and technique can make ballroom feel like an entirely different language, even to somebody who already knows how to move.

Mark Ballas had an even simpler response to the complaints: “The show’s called ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ not ‘Dancing With the Stars With No Dance Experience.’” His argument went straight to the heart of a debate the show has never really managed to settle.

And among the men competing on opening night, Harry Shum Jr. was always going to attract the most attention on that front. His background meant that whatever score he received, viewers were unlikely to judge it without thinking about everything he had done before DWTS.

Something Went Wrong Before a Single Dance Was Scored

Before the leaderboard could take over the night, ABC.com voting ran into technical problems. The hosts later announced that online votes from Night 1 would not count, leaving only text-message votes in the audience result.

That made the first elimination harder to predict. But first, the contestant at the center of the season’s biggest pre-show debate was about to get the number everyone had been waiting for.

Harry’s Dance Background Put Him Under Extra Scrutiny

Harry Shum Jr.’s dance résumé goes back much further than Glee. Earlier in his career, he worked as a dancer on Beyoncé’s tour and appeared in Apple’s famous silhouette commercials, making his background far more extensive than that of the average celebrity entering the ballroom.

Harry knew that history would follow him onto the show. Before the premiere, he pushed back against the idea that “you dance, so you should be able to dance anything,” saying that assumption was simply “just not true.”

He described ballroom as “a whole new vocabulary,” and that distinction mattered to him. But once he and Jenna Johnson finished their first routine, viewers finally had something concrete to attach to all that pre-season discussion.

Harry and Jenna earned 21/30 — the highest score among the men on Night 1. The opening leaderboard put them exactly where many people had expected an experienced performer to land: at the top.

Some viewers were thrilled. One person wrote, “Give them the mirrorball,” while another said, “He is so good! Who knew he could dance like that? He’s a front runner for me!”

But the praise almost immediately turned into a much more complicated conversation. One reaction captured the mood perfectly: “Such an unfair couple. Was it good... yes? Is that annoying yes 😭”

Another viewer wrote, “He dances well as expected 😐😐but I hope that someone with NO DANCE EXPERIENCE goes far.” Someone else was even more direct: “That’s not fair he is a professional dancer. He is an actor does musicals and theatre singer he is an all around artist.”

Even the criticism did not really deny that Harry danced well. The argument was about whether viewers should be equally impressed by a polished first performance when polish was already part of his résumé.

Even Harry’s pairing with Jenna added another layer to the discussion. The people behind DWTS have explained that height, personality, teaching style, and chemistry all matter when couples are formed, while producers also try not to keep handing promising celebrities to the same top pros.

So Harry and Jenna had done exactly what they needed to do: they finished the night with the best number on the board. But another pair was about to finish just one point behind — and the difference in reaction was impossible to miss.

DWTS Became Part of Ezra’s Road to the Paralympics

Ezra Frech and Daniella Karagach earned 20/30, putting them directly behind Harry and Jenna. On paper, the difference was tiny, but in the comments, their performance seemed to create a completely different kind of excitement.

Ezra entered DWTS with a challenge that could not have been more different from Harry’s. The Paralympic gold medalist was born without most of his left leg and competes with a prosthetic, which meant ballroom asked his body to move in an entirely new way.

He described the show as part of his journey toward the 2028 Paralympics, using it to step outside his comfort zone, discover new movement styles, and strengthen his body in different ways. For Ezra, DWTS was not just a dance competition — it became part of his training for 2028.

The tango brought a particularly tricky problem because Ezra cannot control the lower part of his prosthetic leg in the same way a dancer controls an ankle and foot. Sharp steps, balance, and placement therefore required a completely new solution for him and Daniella.

Yet when the routine ended, viewers were not focusing on what had been difficult. One fan wrote, “EASILY THE BEST DANCE OF THE NIGHT! The technique was INSANE! My jaw was dropped the whole time! AMAZING 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻”

Another simply declared, “THIS WAS PHENOMENAL.” From there, the comments quickly jumped from praising the first dance to predicting the final one.

One viewer wrote: “I’m just still in awe of these 2. A mirrorball is in the future !!!!”

Before the premiere, Ezra and Daniella had jokingly named the contestant they were most nervous to compete against. It was not Harry — it was Guillermo Rodriguez, with Daniella even calling him “an icon.”

At the time, that sounded like a fun answer. By the time Guillermo finally received his scores, the joke had taken on a completely different meaning.

Guillermo and Witney’s Pairing Was Never a Sure Thing

Guillermo Rodriguez had already heard speculation that his partnership with Witney Carson might not last long because she is pregnant. He rejected that idea completely, insisting, “That’s not going to happen because I’m trying my best and I’m working hard and I want to go all the way to the finals.”

Witney had her own message going into the season. She revealed that someone suggested disguising her growing bump with fringe and rhinestones, but she had no interest in hiding it.

Then Guillermo and Witney performed their Cha Cha Cha, and the judges’ numbers appeared. Carrie Ann gave them a 4, while Derek Hough and Bruno Tonioli each gave a 3 — for a total of 10/30.

The audience in the ballroom booed the scores, and the number carried even more weight once it was put into historical context. Their 10/30 was one of the lowest in the show’s history, with only Master P’s infamous 8/30 in Season 2 coming in below it.

Technically, Guillermo had just landed at the very bottom of the night. But the judges were specific about what had gone wrong: Derek Hough said Guillermo needed to work on his timing and power and also called out the heel leads in his Cha Cha.

One viewer wrote, “deserved higher scores!!!” while another said, “funniest performance ever. gooooo Guillermo.”

His place in the cast also had more history behind it than the result might suggest. The team behind the show revealed that Guillermo had been wanted on DWTS for years, with Conrad Green saying he “is Dancing with the Stars to the core”and Deena Katz saying he “melts your heart.”

That description made a lot more sense once Guillermo stopped talking about his own dance and turned toward Witney instead. The line that followed had nothing to do with his 10/30 — and it quickly became one of the moments viewers remembered most.

Witney Was Dancing for Two

After the performance, Guillermo praised his pregnant partner instead of dwelling on the judges’ reaction. “She’s an example that women can do anything. She’s pregnant and she’s dancing,” he said of Witney.

Fans immediately latched onto it. “‘Women can do everything’ is going to keep him in this competition LOL I love it,” one viewer wrote.

Another comment was even more direct about what the moment meant for their vote: “him commenting about witney being pregnant saying ‘women can do anything’ you got my vote for sure guillermo 🫶🏻.” Suddenly, his lowest result of the night was competing with something the judges could not put on a paddle.

And that contrast became even more important when it was finally time for someone to leave. The first elimination was about to show why the leaderboard could never tell the entire story.

Night One Produced More Than One Kind of Winner

By the end of the night, Guillermo and Witney were sitting on 10/30, while Conner Leavitt and Adele Zaikman had 12/30. On the judges’ leaderboard, Conner was above Guillermo — but that was not how the final result played out.

Conner was eliminated, while Guillermo survived to dance again. Suddenly, those two extra judges’ points did not look nearly as powerful as they had when the paddles first went up.

Harry and Jenna left with 21/30 and the No. 1 spot, yet much of the reaction around them immediately returned to his previous dance experience. Their performance was strong enough to lead the field, but it also revived the “ringer” argument before Season 35 had really begun.

Ezra and Daniella finished with 20/30, just one point below them, yet their comments were filled with viewers already calling them winners. For a lot of fans, that one point didn’t matter at all next to what Ezra had to overcome to get there.

Then there were Guillermo and Witney. Their 10/30 was the weakest result on the board, but the performance, his humor, and his comment about Witney gave viewers reasons to remember him that had nothing to do with technique.

Conner’s elimination brought all three stories together. A higher place on the leaderboard did not guarantee that a celebrity would be the one viewers kept around.

After only one night, Dancing With the Stars Season 35 had already produced three different versions of a strong debut: the couple the judges placed first, the couple fans were already calling future champions, and the contestant whose personality became bigger than his result.

And that may be the biggest lesson from the premiere. The leaderboard can tell viewers who impressed the judges most — but it cannot tell them who they are going to fall for.