ABC’s ‘Dancing With the Stars’ to premiere next week amid strike

The popular celebrity dancing competition “Dancing With the Stars” will start its 32nd season next week despite a strike by actors and writers. 

Both striking Hollywood unions, the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild, called on the show to postpone its new season while the strikes were ongoing. 

The show employs at least one WGA writer. Some say that the show’s producers made the decision to restart during the strike to put the rest of the crew back to work as soon as possible.

Despite the strikes, the “Stars” of the show will still be allowed to participate. However, the strike forbids shows from promoting or otherwise talking about actors’ prior or future work, meaning that the “packages” featuring work from the actors will be absent.

The show is mostly unscripted, meaning it will likely adhere to WGA strike guidelines.

The decision to restart “Dancing With the Stars” comes after several talk show hosts decided not to restart their respective shows. This week, both Bill Maher and Drew Barrymore retracted their decision to restart their shows amid the strikes.

Despite promising to adhere to union rules during the strike, WGA leadership continued to blast the show online this week.

“Dancing with the Stars is a WGA-covered show,” WGA member David Slack wrote on X. “Its writers are on strike, and they can’t make the show without scab writing. Hope @alfonso_ribeiro @juliannehough @misterhough @MiraSorvino @alydenisof & @jason_mraz do the right thing and refuse to cross our picket line.”

The show plans to have its two-and-a-half-hour premiere on Sept. 28 on ABC and Disney+.