Cristian de la Fuente
Cristian de la Fuente overcame a serious injury to learn an important life lesson on “Dancing With the Stars.”
“When you want to achieve something in life — even if you have a challenge or you have an obstacle — and you really fight for it, at the end of the day you can get whatever you want,” he said. “You read a lot of those lines in books, that you can achieve things in life and blah, blah, blah, but you really don’t believe them until you experience it.”
When the 34-year-old actor ruptured a tendon in his biceps April 28 while performing on the show, he thought he was out of the competition. But he delayed surgery until Friday to remain in the contest, and fans and judges brought him to Monday’s finals.
His professional partner, two-time champ Cheryl Burke, choreographed routines in the remaining weeks that didn’t require de la Fuente to use his injured arm.
Now he’s got his eye on the mirrorball trophy.
“That would be like the perfect ending,” he said. “Already the ending is what I wanted, to be in the finals, but of course, taking the trophy would be the cherry on the cake.”
He also got an added benefit from the “Dancing” experience: a warm friendship with fellow contestant Jason Taylor. Both men have been married for the same amount of time, their wives are good friends and their children are the same age, de la Fuente said.
“We’re both guys, we both enjoy smoking cigars, we like sports and, you know, we like good competition,” he said. “When you compete with a friend, it’s better than when you compete with enemies. We help each other and we give advice and we support each other.”
Though appearing on the show has been de la Fuente’s “hardest job ever by far,” he will miss it when it ends.
“I’ll miss the adrenaline, the excitement, the competition,” he said.
And the costumes: “It’s like I’m having Halloween every Monday.”
Favorite dance tune: “Almost anything that is in Spanish,” he said, adding that Camila and Alberto Blaza are among his favorite artists.
Jason Taylor
Like a series of fox-trot steps, the progression came quickly for Jason Taylor: from “Dancing With the Stars” to dining with the stars.
Whether the Miami Dolphins defensive end wins Tuesday’s finale or not, his showbiz career won’t likely be over. By the time he returns to Miami to play football, he will have met with executives for 20th Century Fox, Universal and Warner Bros.
Also among the rewards he’s already reaped from his “Dancing” success: a lunch date two weeks ago with Denzel Washington. They met at a sushi restaurant in Hollywood and spent 2½ hours discussing football, acting and the similarities between the two.
“What an outstanding guy,” Taylor said. “I lost track of time sitting there talking to him and ended up being an hour and a half late for dance rehearsal. My partner wasn’t too happy.”
The 33-year-old says he’ll put Hollywood on hold to play football this year, but it’s unclear whether the Dolphins want to keep him, in part because his focus is increasingly on his movie career. Taylor has been plotting a path to Tinseltown since joining the Dolphins as a rookie in 1997, and he has worked the past several years with an acting coach.
He sees himself in the kind of action roles that transformed another Miami defensive lineman into a movie star — former Hurricane Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Just don’t expect Taylor to go for the same kind of cheeky laughs.
“The romantic thing I can do,” Taylor says. “I’m not a comedian — you’ve got to know your boundaries — but I think I could definitely do a comedic film if I’m not the lead comic.”
Taylor says he was surprised to reach the “Dancing” finals, and attributes his success to the coaching and choreography of partner Edyta Sliwinska. He says still doesn’t consider himself a dancer, and at social gatherings he won’t be any more inclined to take the floor than before.
“For me to walk into somebody’s wedding or go to a nightclub and start doing a foxtrot or quick step, it doesn’t work that way,” he says.
As for his friendship with de la Fuente, Taylor noted that TV “loves to play it up and be silly with it,” but that they really are close — and will be friends for life.
And hey, another Hollywood connection can’t hurt, either.
“He’s in the entertainment business and has gotten to know a lot of people, and all that information was very interesting to me,” Taylor said. “There are just certain people you click with more, and his wife and my wife get along well, so it was a very easy fit.”
Favorite dance tune: “The Dirty Boogie” by the Brian Setzer Orchestra. Sliwinska introduced Taylor to the song, and they performed the quick step to it on the show.
“I loved it,” he says. “It’s one of those songs where when it comes on, it just makes you want to go.”
Kristi Yamaguchi
Kristi Yamaguchi has regularly landed in first place on this season’s “Dancing With the Stars,” but she’s still shaking her sequins 12 hours a day to prepare for Monday’s final performance.
“This is it,” the champion figure skater said. “There’s no more weeks to fool around with so we’re all going for it.”
Though the 36-year-old Olympian is accustomed to wearing crystal-clad costumes and performing for judges, dancing on the ABC reality show is hardly like competing on the ice, she said. The pre-performance jitters are the same, but the ballroom brings more steps, more sequins and a professional partner.
“The feet move so fast on the floor,” she said. “To learn these dances in such a short period of time and look like you know what you’re doing has been hard.”
She heaps praise on partner Mark Ballas, with whom she’s developed a close friendship: “I’ve spent more time with him than I have my own family in the last two months,” she said.
Yamaguchi and her two daughters, ages 2 1/2 and 4 1/2, were already fans of the show when the skater was invited to participate. Her previous dance experience was limited to clubs and weddings, and she was nervous about the live-TV element, but she signed up because she “thought it looked like fun.”
And it’s been even better than she expected.
“It really was such a great group of people,” she said. “We all had friendships going, so it’s not that cutthroat competitive feel.”
But make no mistake: Yamaguchi wants to take home the mirrorball trophy Tuesday. That’s in the fans’ hands, she said.
“It’s really up to them who they think deserves that trophy. I can’t deny that it’d be nice to have — and to have the bragging rights that come along with it,” she said. “You know, a girl hasn’t won it in over five seasons, so it’s all about girl power this week.”
Favorite dance tune: Rihanna’s “Please Don’t Stop the Music.”
“I really wanted that song,” Yamaguchi said, “and when we got it for the cha-cha, I was so excited.”