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Guillermo Rodriguez Voted Off 'DWTS' — Kimmel Calls It 'An Outrage'
Jimmy Kimmel's longtime sidekick and pro partner Witney Carson scored a season-best 22 out of 40 on 'Super Bowl Night' — and still went home, prompting Kimmel to joke about suing the show.
Guillermo Rodriguez, the beloved sidekick from "Jimmy Kimmel Live!," was voted off "Dancing With the Stars" on Tuesday night, ending a five-week run in which the fan favorite consistently scored near the bottom of the judges' leaderboard but kept surviving on audience votes alone.
Rodriguez and professional partner Witney Carson went out on "Super Bowl Night," a theme built around past halftime-show songs, with guest judge Joe Buck and ex-NFL stars Emmitt Smith, Donald Driver, DeMarcus Ware and Danny Amendola on hand. Their salsa to Bad Bunny's "Tití Me Preguntó" earned a season-best 22 out of 40 — still the lowest score of the night, enough to send them home as the sixth couple eliminated from Season 35, according to TV Insider's recap.
Kimmel Plays It Up
The late-night host didn't let the elimination go quietly. On the Wednesday broadcast of his own show, Kimmel called the result "an outrage" and floated the idea of "legal action," while praising Carson's work turning her partner into a competent dancer, telling her she'd "taken this lump of Play-Doh and sculpted him into a masterpiece," per TheWrap.
"I'M GOING TO GO HOME AND MAKE ME A MARGARITA," Rodriguez told Extra after the show, joking that Carson had banned him from tequila for the length of the competition.
Kimmel also pointed out that clips of the pair's rehearsals and performances had racked up far more views on social media than those of any other couple this season, framing the elimination as a mismatch between the show's internal scoring and its online popularity, a dynamic E! News noted has shadowed Rodriguez's run from the start.
It's a storyline that tracks with the season's broader tenor: Rodriguez spent weeks fielding online criticism over his low technical scores, even as he and Carson built one of the show's most engaged fan bases. Carson, a six-time champion pro, has said in interviews throughout the run that she stood by her partner's improvement week over week regardless of judges' numbers.
Ten celebrities remain in the competition — Tatyana Ali, Tyler Cameron, Jenna Dewan, Ezra Frech, Amber Glenn, Maura Higgins, Jackson Olson, Harry Shum Jr., Julia Stiles and Connor Wood — heading into next week's "Dedication Night," which airs Tuesday, Oct. 20, on ABC and Disney+, with former professional dancer Kym Johnson joining as a guest judge.
For now, Rodriguez and Carson say they're taking the exit in stride. "America loves you," Rodriguez recalled fans telling him outside the studio. "You make us so happy right now" — a sendoff he said left him "very surprised" by the scale of the reaction.