Suni Lee has danced her way into the semifinals of “Dancing With the Stars.”
Her samba on Monday was a huge contrast from the previous week.
“Last week was rough,” said the 18-year-old St. Paul gymnast and Olympic champion on ABC’s dance competition. “The day of the live show, I was feeling really sick. The whole time I was thinking, ‘Just get through the dance and then you can get up and go.’ After the dance, I had to run to the bathroom because I had to throw up.”
“Is she OK?” one of the judges is heard saying as she fled the stage.
“Oh, poor thing!” another says.
“I literally ran off stage on live TV,” Lee said.
The camera next shows her backstage, looking distressed.
“I was more embarrassed than anything,” Lee says. “But I was not going to throw up on national TV.”
Physically, Lee said on Monday that she had recovered (not sure what was wrong); Emotionally, though …
“Probably going to have to delete all my social media,” Lee told her dance partner, pro Sasha Farber.
“Why?” Farber said, looking confused.
“I don’t like looking at, like, negative comments and stuff,” she said. “On social media, I always see a lot of mean comments,” she said, “about like me not being able to dance or I need to go home. Since I’m not like the best at it …”
“You’re out of your comfort zone,” Farber said.
“Yeah, and I feel like they’re right,” she said. “I let them get to me and I’m just like, ‘See, no one believes that I can do it.’ I did not think I would make it this far.
“If I didn’t care about what everybody said, like I feel like I could be so much better.”
That’s the attitude the college freshman at Auburn University took as she prepared to dance to “All for You,” a Janet Jackson song that was a hit in 2001 — two years before Lee was born.
“I have been working my butt off in rehearsals,” Lee said. “If I look goofy, then I look goofy. I’m having fun and no one’s going to take the fun away.”
Goofy was not how Lee looked as she danced across the stage in a red gown, her smile as bright as the golden highlights in her curls.
“SUNI!” judge Derek Hough proclaimed, standing up. “My girl! Yo, get this girl a hair campaign immediately! Because new hair, new confidence … you were so vibrant, you had this beautiful energy … so magnetic, it was so smooth, the technique. The samba is a tough one and you did it so beautifully, so gracefully.”
“Rebooted, recharged, running on high octane,” said Len Goodman. “Actually, I see you for the first time in HD.”
“Suni, I’m so proud of you,” Carrie Ann Inaba said. “This is what I thought was inside of you this whole time, we’ve all been waiting. Does it feel like this is finally you?”
“Yes!” Lee said.
Tyra Banks, the show’s host, observed: “The highlights have given her life.”
For their performance, Lee and Farber earned three 10s from the judges: a perfect score of 30 out of 30.
Because it was a double-elimination night, Lee and Farber also had to salsa in a dance-off against country singer Jimmie Allen and pro dancer Emma Slater.
Not all social media comments are mean. On YouTube, someone who watched the dance-off said:
“Suni is peaking at the right time,” they wrote. “Gone is the timid, no confidence, no presence Suni…she looked great, danced great and looked really confident today…”
The judges and viewers agreed — and Allen is now singing the blues, because he and his partner were eliminated from the competition, along with vlogger Olivia Jade and her dance partner, Valentin Chmerkovskiy.
This means that Lee and Farber will dance in the semifinals on Monday, Nov. 15, along with the six other remaining couples. Viewers can tune in — and vote — at 7 p.m. CST on Monday on ABC (or view later via streaming and Hulu).
fyi: For more info, visit Abc.com/shows/dancing-with-the-stars.
