Whitney Leavitt Wasn’t Shy About Wanting To Be On ‘Dancing With The Stars.’ Did It Cost Her The Finals?

The "Secret Lives of Mormon Wives" star shone on the dance floor — but in the end, America wasn't ready to reward an ambitious reality show villain.

On Tuesday night, “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star Whitney Leavitt was sent home on “Dancing With the Stars” just a week before the show’s finals, leaving her in sixth place and forever ruining my fantasy bracket at work (which, to be fair, was already busted into oblivion by Andy Richter’s Cinderella-story run this season).

“SLOMW” villain status be damned, Leavitt was so charismatic and seemed like such a natural performer based on her TikToks alone that I had predicted it would be neck-and-neck between her and wildlife conservationist Robert Irwin at the end. She was paired with Mark Ballas, a three-time mirrorball champ and show veteran whose dances over the years have ranked consistently among fans’ favorites. With a background in dance, Leavitt scored near the top of the leaderboard week after week (which itself brought accusations of favoritism, something top-scoring male contestants are immune to, somehow). I thought she’d be a shoo-in.

Clearly, I was wrong.

It’s hard not to wonder if bad timing played a part — it was the first show after Leavitt’s other show, “SLOMW,” dropped its full third season last Thursday. Leavitt is missing for part of it, with her co-stars revealing she wanted out of MomTok, the group of women at the center of the show who are supposedly bound together by sisterhood, social media and a past swinging scandal. She resurfaces midway through the season and tells friends that she left MomTok after what she felt was a half-hearted reentry into the friend group — but allowed the cameras on once more when her agent told her she’d be able to audition for a certain ballroom dance competition show.

It looks damning, a clear admission that she’s only going along with the show for what she can get out of it. But it’s also hard to blame her. “SLOMW” is somewhat unique in reality TV in that it has not shied away from fourth-wall-breaking conversations about show contracts and business opportunities the women get from their influencer statuses. Each cast member has benefited from it. It’s also led to some on-air tension: A big source of conflict last season centered on the revelation that Demi Engemann was willing to have co-star Jessi Ngatikaura axed in order to get more money. No one sided with Engemann then — it looked like a clear-cut betrayal and cemented her shift among fans from a favorite to the villain.