Charity Lawson went to "hell and back" with her mental health on 'Dancing With the Stars' after receiving death threats.
Charity Lawson struggled on DWTS
The former 'Bachelorette' star took part on the show last year, and though she and professional partner Artem Chingvintsev finished fourth, she was relentlessly bullied online and didn't feel she was "protected" by producers as a Black woman in the public eye.
Noting as a therapist herself, she felt the show ought to have one on set, she told Cheryl Burke on the professional dancer's 'Sex, Lies and Spray Tans' podcast: “I’m surprised you guys don’t. Honestly, I’m very surprised because quite literally, while ‘Dancing With the Stars’ was great, I literally went through hell and back with my mental health in that show. It hit me like a ton of bricks.
“Is it shocking? I don’t know if it’s shocking. I think to a certain degree it was expected.
“I came into the ‘Dancing With the Stars’ fanbase like, ‘This is going to be a piece of cake,’ only to be… almost to the point where it was so much worse than ‘Bachelor’ and ‘Bachelorette.
"[But] I was getting death threats for existing… for not performing enough, for being conceited, for being entitled, for being the biggest b**** on the cast. It’s crazy.”
After receiving a string of awful comments on both her own social media channels and the show's official account, she confided in Artem, who went to producers in a bid to protect her.
She said: “It was so damaging, night in, night out.
"I had to tell Artem, ‘This is unfortunately what we’re dealing with and what we’re up against.’ If you look in comparison to every other contestant on this season, they don’t have this underneath their comments… I’m just literally existing and being called a b****.”
Charity cried and noted that while she can only speak of her own experiences, she thought it important to note because of “the difference that I have to go through this life as a Black woman and being on a reality TV show."
She added: "It’s like the same things are just not protected.
I just had to suppress it and it got to the point where I was like, I’m just trying to survive. I’m just trying to make it out of the season… There were weeks where I’d come home from rehearsal where I’m like, I literally hope I forget my steps and get voted off… It’s a really dark place.”
The reality TV star was also asked if she felt her race had influenced the outcome of the show.
She replied: "Yeah."
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