Anna Delvey Slams 'Dancing With The Stars' For 'Attempt' To Embarrass Her

Convicted fraudster Anna Delvey was voted off of "Dancing With the Stars" on Tuesday after performing to KT Tunstall’s "Suddenly I See" with her professional dance partner, Ezra Sosa.

While residing in New York City, Anna posed as a wealthy German heiress, successfully mingling with the city’s elite social circles. Throughout her stay, she scammed countless individuals, hotels, and banks, frequently using invalid credit cards and forged bank statements to sustain her image of wealth.

On April 25, 2019, Anna was found guilty of eight charges in Manhattan’s State Supreme Court, including attempted first-degree grand larceny, second and third-degree grand larceny, and theft of services.

As a convicted felon, many "Dancing With the Stars" fans were upset when they learned Anna Delvey was cast for the current season.

Delvey was caught off guard by her early elimination from "Dancing With the Stars," especially after receiving plenty of encouraging praise in the show's initial stages.

“I thought, like, ‘Well, they were building me up.’ It’s like, ‘Well, only if you smile more, only if you do X, Y, Z, it’s going to be so much better,’” the 33-year-old told fellow "DWTS" contestant Tori Spelling on her “Misspelling” podcast.

“It felt like they put so much effort in trying to get me on the show and make me feel comfortable, just to eliminate me this early," she added. "I see it, yeah, like an attempt of an embarrassment for us to get eliminated before Eric [Roberts] or Reginald [VelJohnson] in a dancing competition. Even though in the end it’s not that big of a deal.”

Delvey had hoped that her stint on "Dancing With the Stars" would serve as a second chance to show the world who she truly is.

“It just felt a bit upsetting to me,” Delvey said. “It felt like a waste of time for me to do all this for them to just discard me so easily. I know the show was very excited to have me on, but the large part of the audience is not the people who would usually be excited about me in general.”

“I never had high expectations for [the] show for myself," she added.

Delvey also disclosed that she encountered significant “negativity” during the first two weeks, stating that it seemed like fans of the show “just decided to hate us.”

“I don’t think I’ve done the worst job on the show,” she stated, adding that she “improved” between her two "DWTS" routines. “We got eliminated and people who were, I think, below us got to stay on the show and makes it a bit sus for a show that’s called 'Dancing With the Stars,' and not like 'Gossiping With the Stars' or 'Making Friends With the Stars.'”

Delvey’s "Dancing With the Stars" partner, Ezra Sosa, opened up about the challenges the “fake heiress” faced in handling the backlash over her casting on the show. In a TikTok video, the professional dancer expressed his gratitude for the “love” he received from fans after his Week 1 debut but noted that Delvey did not receive the same level of support.

“On my end, I was feeling so much positivity, but on my partner’s end, she wasn’t receiving the same,” Sosa said. “I think the hardest part of my day [was], after our press line, she was reading the comments and then we couldn’t find her,” he added, as he wiped away tears. “They finally found her in the bathroom and she was crying. As her partner, I want to just give her the best experience she could possibly could [have] and knowing that that’s not the case, it really did break my heart."

While Sosa acknowledged that Delvey's actions were “controversial” and “not right,” he urged fans to offer her a “second chance.”

“I can never justify that for her or anyone in her life,” he said. “But it is really hard because this person that I am truly falling in love with every single day in rehearsal isn’t the person that everyone sees in the media.”

"Dancing With the Stars" airs simultaneously on ABC and Disney+ on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET