Jen Affleck was seemingly ready to clap back at Maks Chmerkovskiy for his criticisms about her Dancing With the Stars partner, Jan Ravnik — but the duo ultimately decided to take the high road instead.
Affleck, 26, uploaded a TikTok on Monday, October 27, that featured her and pro Ravnik, 30, during a break from DWTS rehearsal. The video was titled, “Me When Anyone Talks Trash About Jan.”
In the clip, the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star could be seen furiously typing away on her phone hitting back at haters before Ravnik stepped in and stopped her.
“Take it down. Take it down. Take it down. We need it gone,” Ravnik mouthed over a pre-recorded audio snippet. “That doesn’t represent me or what we need to be doing.”
Affleck then sat down and rolled her eyes in defeat, hesitating before ultimately turning back to her phone to delete what she had just posted.
“We don’t tolerate Jan slander in this house!” Affleck captioned the video.
Fellow DWTS pro Ezra Sosa quickly showed support for Affleck defending her partner, writing in her comments section, “I’ll ride at dawn for this man.”
While neither Affleck nor Ravnik specified what — or who — they were responding to, the video comes shortly after Chmerkovskiy, 45, made comments about being unimpressed with Ravnik’s inaugural season on the ABC dance series.
“Dancing With the Stars is a worldwide phenomenon. … I’m sorry, Jan has absolutely no business being a pro on Dancing With the Stars,” Chmerkovskiy claimed during the Friday, October 24, episode of wife Peta Murgatroyd’s “The Penthouse With Peta” podcast. “There’s zero foundation technique, quality, understanding of the partnership. Bro, I’m getting emotional. It is absurd, and this is unreal how blind we have to be and God forbid say what’s obviously there.”
Chmerkovskiy — who was a DWTS pro himself on and off from 2006 to 2018 — pointed to Ravnik and Affleck’s foxtrot during last week’s Wicked Night to support his argument, claiming that Ravnik had “no idea” what the dance style entitled. (Ravnik and Affleck ultimately earned at 32 out of 40 from the judges for the performance.)
“How are you going to expect him to teach it and deliver that message in a format that is completely different from even ballroom dancing?” Chmerkovskiy continued. “We had this criticism weeks ago, and I’m like, ‘Bro, is anybody going to explain it to him?’”
Murgatroyd, for her part, agreed that she didn’t “love the foxtrot elements” of Ravnik’s choreography — which was set to the tune of Wicked’s “As Long As Your Mine” — but argued that he is “learning slowly” throughout his first season and should be given an amount of “grace.” (Murgatroyd, 39, joined DWTS in 2011, serving as a troupe member for two years before becoming a pro. She stepped away in 2024 to welcome her and Chmerkovskiy’s first baby.)
Chmerkovskiy disagreed with his wife’s assessment, stating that Ravnik’s dance from the previous week for Dedication Night — where he and Affleck danced a Viennese Waltz to Lauren Daigle’s “Rescue” — delivered “some sort of direction” before going “off the cliff” the following week.
The former pro added that he has nothing against Ravnik and it’s “not his fault,” but reiterated that Affleck “has no partner.”
Murgatroyd then suggested that Ravnik should have been put in the “troupe” for a year before becoming an actual pro on the show. She claimed that there was an “obvious” reason he was granted pro status so quickly, hinting at Ravnik’s previous job as Taylor Swift’s dancer on her worldwide Eras Tour.
“Apart from that he’s a lovely guy, he looks great, he obviously is a great dancer,” she added, before noting, “Hiring a non-ballroom dancer to teach ballroom dancing to a celebrity as a job is outrageous.”
She continued, “He should’ve learned, gone to ballroom classes. Look, what I would do if I were him — and I don’t know what he’s doing behind the scenes, let’s be honest. … But I would do my four hours in the studio, whatever I needed to do, and then I would take [Jen] for another four hours and go elsewhere.”
Prior to his time on DWTS and the Eras Tour, Ravnik won multiple National, European and World champion titles. He also won the Best Dancer of Slovenia award twice and an award for the Best Trainer/Choreographer from the Slovenian Olympic committee.
Since joining DWTS for season 34, Ravnik and Affleck have remained in the middle of the pack with scoring, but have seen some criticism from the judges over their choreography.
Ravnik, however, has taken it in stride. “They’re just obsessed with me or something,” he joked to Us Weekly exclusively after Disney Night earlier this month. “I mean, look, I am new, so I’m gonna take every note that they’re giving to me. I don’t think it’s in a bad way that they’re always saying.”
Affleck, meanwhile, has maintained her excitement over being paired with Ravnik. “I am so excited,” she previously told Us. “There’s a lot of energy. We’re both newbies, and I’m just so excited.”
Ravnik and Affleck will next dance together for DWTS’ Halloween Night on Tuesday, October 28, where they will perform a contemporary to Swift’s. “Look What You Made Me Do.”
Dancing With the Stars airs on ABC and Disney+ Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.
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