Peta Murgatroyd Explains Why ‘DWTS’ Scoring System Is ‘So Not Correct’ and ‘Should Start at 2s’

Former Dancing With the Stars pro Peta Murgatroyd has a bone to pick with the reality TV dance competition’s current scoring system.

“A nine for me is, like, you are close to perfection — and perfection for a celebrity,” Murgatroyd, 39, said on the Friday, October 24, episode of her “Penthouse With Peta” podcast, discussing the ongoing season 34. “That’s why I feel like the scoring system is so, so hard and so not correct.”

She added, “Like, we should start at twos and threes but a nine [means] you’re nearly there perfect. There’s people who get nines that I don’t think should get nines.” (Master P, for the record, did receive twos back during season 2 for his now-disatrous paso doble.)

While Murgatroyd did not name who was undeserving of their top scores, the judges — Carrie Ann Inaba, Derek Hough, Bruno Tonoili and guest Jon M. Chu — handed out several nines to the likes of Whitney Leavitt, Jordan Chiles and Alix Earle on Tuesday, October 21, during Wicked Night.

At the beginning of the season, the judges had kept scores to sixs and sevens.

“The scoring tonight, just be mindful, it might be a little lower than you’re expecting because there’s a long way to go,” Hough, 40, explained during the season premiere last month. “This is a marathon. We want to give you guys room to grow.”

Derek’s sister and DWTS host, Julianne Hough, appreciated the move.

“I think over the years, we’ve done a lot of fusions of proper technical ballroom and Latin dances have fused into sort of these hybrid dances,” Julianne, 37, said on the show’s companion podcast at the time. “I really appreciated Bruno and Derek dropping the scores a little bit because you want to be able to see people improve, and you want to be able to give them the right critique so they can learn and grow.”

She added, “He’d really be talking about the fundamentals and I think there was a lot of hybrid dancing [on Tuesday], which by the way, I get because we’re in this new generation of TikTok and playful fun and it’s entertaining. But that’s why Dancing With the Stars is so amazing because it is technical and it’s a specific genre and it’s hard to do.”

In successive weeks, former DWTS pros like Kym Johnson-Herjavec and Cheryl Burke have taken guest positions on the judging panel. (Burke, 41, will appear on next week’s Halloween Night.)

“She’s not going in hard,” Burke exclusively told Us Weekly on Thursday, October 23, defending Inaba’s feedback that sparked rampant fan criticism. “But then when the judges are all full of compliments, [people] get mad at that too. This is also the beauty of the show, like, everyone has the right to their own opinion, but don’t attack anybody.”

She continued, “If you’re opinionated and you happen to be a woman, there is a little bit of that, right? Because, like, I’m pretty sure every judge has said the same thing at some point, but the reaction to them, to them as individuals, it’s very different.”

Dancing With the Stars airs on ABC and Disney+ Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.

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