After admitting she was tempted to have a “love affair” with Derek Hough during “Dancing With the Stars,” Brooke Burke is setting the record straight on their “intimate” bond.
“There’s a big difference between sensual connection and a sexual connection,” the actress clarified to E! News on Thursday.
She explained that the duo had “so much chemistry” filming Season 7 in 2008 because they experienced “all these things that a couple goes through.”
Burke, 52, noted, “It was romantic, it was challenge, it was struggle, it was triumph, it was fear. You’re learning something new, you’re facing your fear, you’re being judged, you’re learning how to communicate.”
The pair “learn[ed] how to find [their] rhythm together as a couple” before winning the Mirrorball.
“For me, that was very intimate and at times, very romantic, especially during performances like the Rumba and just the romance of storytelling through our bodies,” Burke added. “That’s what I meant.”
She went on to say that her boundaries with then-boyfriend — and now-ex-husband — David Charvet were “very clear” at the time.
“David went to every show and sometimes to rehearsals and he loved the artistry of dance and he understood … the need for that intimate relationship,” the former “DWTS” host recalled.
Burke initially made headlines on Oct. 9 when she spoke to “Sex, Lies and Spray Tans” podcast host Cheryl Burke about her hopes that she “would have had a love affair” with Hough were she not in a relationship.
“[Performing together] can be more intimate than making love in a bedroom,” Brooke said of practically “making love on a dance floor.”
She also admitted to listeners that she was “crushing” on her “brutally honest” partner at the time.
Hough, who got married to Hayley Erbert in August after seven years together, has yet to comment on Brooke’s confessions.
As for the fitness guru’s own love life, Brooke finalized her divorce from David in 2020 and moved on with athlete Scott Rigsby. The pair got engaged in 2021.
