“Hunger Games” star Willow Shields joins AccessHollywood.com as our behind-the-scenes celebrity blogger for Season 20 of ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.”
Here is Willow’s latest post…
Willow Shields and Mark Ballas seen rehearsing for ‘Dancing with the Stars’ on March 10, 2015 (ABC)
The day before the show I was taken aside by one of the producers and told that Mark and I were opening the season. I’m like ok, what does that mean exactly? The producer repeated themselves by saying pretty much the same thing but a little slower, “Youu and Mark arrrre going to be the fiiirst dancers! I’m like What? Why?… and thanks for speaking slower. Well, you know that feeling when your riding a roller coaster and you feel like your stomach just fell to your feet, yeah that feeling! Well that’s how I felt. I WAS warned that this competition would challenge me andddddd there is a warning sign before you get on the roller coaster “Warning do not get on this ride if you suffer from motion sickness”, obviously I ignored both. Too late, I was starting to hear in my head that loud CLICK, CLICK , CLICK sound of the roller coaster as it’s being pulled up the track and there’s no turning back! We’re going first.
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Mark coached me by saying the day before, “It’s just you and me, don’t get focused on the crowd”. Then the morning of the show he said, “Oh yeah, there’s gonna be a thousand people in the live audience”. I’m like, “Mark, you just got done telling me it’s just you and me, now your telling me a thousand people will be in the crowd, gee thanks Mark now are you going to remind me how many TV viewers there are, ughh!” Needless to say I was pretty nervous, especially because we were the first couple to dance.
As Mark and I were walking to our starting position I walked right past actor Jeff Goldblum sitting in the audience (yes, I still fangirl over things), I almost BLANKED OUT, forgot why I was on the ballroom dance floor, instead I wanted to yell to my brother and sister in the audience, “Hey guys look! ‘Jurassic Park!’ ‘Jurassic Park!'”. Then I told myself to focus, you must focus! I don’t think 15 million people are tuning in to hear why some of my fondest childhood memories revolve around Steven Spielberg movies!
As Mark and I waited for the music to start, I thought to myself about the dress rehearsal a couple hours before. The TV show placed stand-in judges so the cameras could plan their shots and stuff. We nailed the dress rehearsal and the stand-in judges (who I think were camera operators and grips) really loved it! Yeah I know they’re just stand-ins but hopefully we get the same response.
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Done. I thought we did awesome! It wasn’t perfect but we did what we had planned on doing and Mark felt really good about it too! The judges had some great things to say and I was so happy for this, but the scores were lower than I had hoped. Darn. It does show I still have a lot of work to do! I did manage to bite my lip and not argue with the judges that the stand-in judges gave us better scores, I don’t think Len Goodman would have appreciated it!
Back to work. The next morning I really had to move on, there’s really no time to worry about my scores, I’ve got another dance to learn, the Argentine Tango. I absolutely LOVE this dance, but I’ve never done it myself. It’s so beautiful and intense, but can Mark and I pull this off? Well I know Mark can but can I? I’m pretty hard on myself and my low scores made me feel like I needed to work even harder. As we started to train for the tango I joked with Mark, “No more goofing around this week Mark, we’ve got work to do!” We HAVE worked hard the past few days, but I do admit, we still goofed around a lot.
— Willow Shields
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