'DWTS' Season 1 Ended With a Rematch: Revisiting the Finale Twist
Dancing With the Stars has given Us plenty of unexpected twists in the last 20 years, but perhaps none as surprising as in the very first season.
When the ballroom dance competition premiered on ABC in 2005, there were only six couples vying for the mirrorball trophy in as many episodes. Bachelorette Trista Sutter was paired with Louis van Amstel, boxer Evander Holyfield danced with Edyta Śliwińska, supermodel Rachel Hunter with pro Jonathan Roberts and New Kids on the Block singer Joey McIntyre shared the stage with Ashly DelGrosso.
As the series climbed to the top of the summer ratings, actor John O’Hurley and pro Charlotte Jørgensen faced off against General Hospital‘s Kelly Monaco and pro Alec Mazo in the finale.
Monaco, now 49, and Mazo, now 47, were ultimately crowned the winners despite receiving lower scores than the runners-up throughout the season. It’s a debate that has only gotten more heated among DWTS viewers each year: What holds more weight, the judges’ scores or the fan votes?
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In Monaco’s case, it seems votes reigned supreme. But in a shocking play, ABC set up a rematch between the final two couples — with O’Hurley, now 71, and Jørgensen, now 53, coming out on top. Donations of more than $120,000 were made to each of Monaco and O’Hurley’s chosen charities at the end of the do-over broadcast.
While reflecting on two decades of DWTS, original host Tom Bergeron looked back on how the show “blew up” in its first season.
“There had been a little kerfuffle where people thought John O’Hurley should have won [season 1] instead of Kelly Monaco,” Bergeron, 70, told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Monday, November 10. “So they did this rematch thing in September ’05, which I always thought was questionable, because you’re only addressing a part of the audience that didn’t like the outcome, so you’ve got a smaller size of the slice of the pie going in — and then there’s no guarantee that slice is going to show up that night.”
Bergeron noted that unlike the rest of the season, the “ratings weren’t great” for the rematch, which caused some concern. “I think it made us all a little nervous. ‘OK, maybe we’ve killed the golden goose here,'” he recalled. “But then when we came back in 2006 with a full season, a new cast, and it blew up again. Then I knew. … ‘OK, this is going to be around for a while.'”
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Despite the results of the redo, Monaco and Mazo still went down in DWTS history as the show’s first champions. The actress, however, came close to never stepping foot in the ballroom at all.
“I had a letter in my mailbox in my dressing room at General Hospital. We have these little mailboxes outside of our dressing rooms, and there was a letter in there and it was a request to do Dancing With the Stars,” Monaco recalled to Entertainment Weekly earlier this year. “I remember bringing it home and getting feedback from family, friends, and so forth, and they were like, ‘You can’t do a reality show. Actors don’t do a reality show.'”
Monaco wasn’t familiar with ballroom dance in any way. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into. But I was just like, ‘F*** it. I’ll try anything once,'” she explained. “That’s how I’ve always rolled in life. If an opportunity comes, I’ll try it.”
Judges Carrie Ann Inaba, Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli held nothing back when the competition began — and Monaco was left “horrified” by their feedback. “I got the lowest score, I think, ever in the history of Dancing With the Stars,” she teased. “So, I was like, ‘OK, it’s on. We’re going in and we’re doing this.’ Then I took it seriously, and I was all in at that point.”
Though she “improved weekly,” Monaco never felt safe from elimination. “Every week was like, ‘What? Are you kidding me? This is crazy,'” she noted. “It was wild. But I knew the popularity of the show was growing so hugely, and I got a grasp on the viewership and the audience and who was relating to what.”
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Monaco couldn’t believe it when she and Mazo were announced as the winners — and neither could O’Hurley. “It was a shock to me,” he told EW. “She got three 10s and she fell several times during the final piece. I was scratching my head as to how this all happened. So, obviously there were some issues. I’ll leave it at that.”
O’Hurley joked that “all was right with the world” after his dance-off redemption. (Bergeron, who will return to DWTS for the 20th anniversary extravaganza on Tuesday, November 11, joked the Seinfeld alum took the show “a little too seriously.”)
For Monaco, the results didn’t change one bit. “The dance-off happened and it went down how it went down,” she said. “I don’t think anyone really remembers that.”
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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