EXCLUSIVE: Dancing With the Stars' Louis van Amstel on the Real Kelly Osbourne and Priscilla Presley's Stagefright

In any kind of live performance, especially when you are attempting fairly sophisticated dance routines with amateurs on live television, there is a lot of room for accidents. What was the closest you came to mid-dance meltdown during a taping?

The closest one would be with Priscilla. It wasn't a disaster but more of a disappointing moment. In rehearsals, she would be amazing and then she just totally blocked onstage. She made some mistakes in the steps and the judges commented on them. But Priscilla, I mean, that lady, wow. You talk about integrity and the lessons she taught me...unbelievable. This woman is so special.

The only real disaster I can remember is in Season 1 with Kelly Monaco, her entire bra came undone and she had to cover her boobs with her left hand because they would have come out, 100%.

In a situation like that, do producers stop the performance and start the dance over?

No, they've never hit that time delay button.

So, even when the music doesn't start on time, they won't re-stage the dancers?

That happens sometimes. It hasn't happened to me, thank God, but I remember in Season 3, with Mario [Lopez] and Karina [Smirnoff], their jive was half-speed and they had rehearsed until two in the morning, and their whole jive was pretty much too slow.

And going back to Priscilla's stage fright, how did you calm her nerves?

I tried to keep her out of her head and really just focus on the dance steps. What didn't help, is that her ex-husband Elvis had stage fright himself. If Priscilla tells me that Elvis Presley had a bucket next to the stage where he threw up every time he had to perform, it doesn't really help Priscilla if an icon like Elvis suffered from that problem. And I know that Barbra Streisand, she has stage fright. So the bigger celebrities apparently, suffer from those onstage nerves too.

Can you talk about your first dance with Kelly Osbourne [tonight]?

It's a Viennese waltz and cha cha relay, which is a new segment to the show. It's where there are pretty much groups of four couples and they all dance against each other, but it's all solos. So it's thirty second solos of each couple and then the judges put them in place first through fourth and that will be converted into points and that will be added to your main solo performance. So we pretty much have two dances in the first week.

Pages: 1 2