Maksim Chmerkovskiy & Brandy On Their ‘Dancing’ Spanking Incident

First it was Bolton-Gate, and this week’s “Dancing with the Stars” was all about the spanking scandal.

On Monday night’s competition show, rehearsal footage before their samba showed Maksim Chmerkovskiy smacking Brandy on the bottom as a means of encouraging her to get the steps right, something which angered judge Len Goodman, who spoke out against it.

“Slapping her on the a**, giving it all this, it’s not the way to [teach], in my opinion,” Len said to Maks during the pair’s critique, something the professional dancer brushed off then and after the show when he spoke to Access Hollywood.

“Sweetie, I’m 30 years old, I’ve been coaching since I was 14,” Maks said. “[I’ve] run my own studio since [I was] 16. I’ve had tens of thousands of people, I have students fly from Japan, from Europe, from South America — that is what I do for a living. Do you really think that I’m going to change because somebody calls me out on it? Or that I think I’m doing something wrong?”

Maks said he can conduct himself that way in the studio with his “DWTS” celebrity partners because they get him.

“It’s like this: I love Brandy, she knows that and I know that you know Mel [B], Erin [Andrews], Layla [Ali], Tia [Carrerre], Debi Mazar — everybody I’ve danced with — Denise Richards, everybody called me everyday to wish me luck,” he said.

“I love people who love me for who I am and those are the people I care about,” Maks continued. “If you go in the room with me you’ll understand where I’m coming from. TV doesn’t translate a lot of things.”

Brandy said she is fine with the way Maks teaches.

“You’re the reason why I got three 8s tonight, you know that… he knows,” Brandy said. “He knows that I need that; I need for somebody to push me as hard as I push myself and his method works with me and when we leave the dancing studio we’re eating French fries at some McDonalds nearby, just hanging out talking. That’s what it is and everybody is not going to see that, but I’m going to ride with my partner and he is going to ride with me and we are going to ride as far as we can get.”