Dancing With the Stars pro Witney Carson wants her partner, Robert Irwin, to stay focused on the prize: the Len Goodman Mirrorball Trophy that will go the winner of season 34.
So she realized that it might not have been the wisest move to have him rip off his shirt and flash his impressive abs Tuesday when they performed a salsa to Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby.” Even judge Carrie Ann Inaba was stunned.
“I had so many moments of regret,” Carson told Entertainment Tonight. “I was like, ‘Did I make the right choice taking his shirt off?'”
She then joked, “Girls, let’s take it down a little. I can only take so much!”
Over the weekend, Carson had already posted a TikTok video that poked fun at the interest she had received for her partner on the internet. In the clip, she and Irwin were seen walking into a studio as she took his phone. “Coming in hot to check Robert’s DMs,” she wrote over it.
She also wrote on her Instagram Story about how women were filling up her inbox and “flooding the DMs,” per PEOPLE.
There was too much romantic interest in her partner, she said, so she pitched a solution: “We are currently dancing our lives away so we are unable to respond. Robert for The Bachelor?! Idk this is too stressful for me to handle lol!”
Before that, Irwin, the 21-year-old son of the late Australian conservationist Steve Irwin, told E! News that he’s “still looking for the American girl,” and he noted that Carson was helping. She described a screening process that included approval from Irwin’s big sister and season 21 DWTS winner, Bindi Irwin.
“I’ve got another protective older sister now,” he said.
Disney/Eric McCandless
In the latest interview, Carson said she was banking all the DMs for “when the time is right, after the season, cause we cannot be distracted. He thinks that it would be fine, but he cannot.”
Irwin said it’s all “very flattering,” and it “makes me get very red and get very awkward.”
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly‘s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
In the moment, he said, letting loose was “so much fun,” because it allowed him to “show a new side.”
He added that his mom and sister were in the audience and hadn’t expected the steamy moment.
Irwin and Carson are one of the 11 couples that remain in the competition.
Dancing With the Stars airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.
