Dancing With The Stars veteran Peta Murgatroyd has "not moved on" from the show and would love to return, but understands if producers don't ask her back.
Murgatroyd has been a dancing professional on the ABC reality competition series for 16 years but took this season off because she had just given birth to her third child, which was her second baby in 18 months.
While she worked through all of her pregnancies and even returned to DWTS just seven weeks after having her second son, Rio, this time around Murgatroyd did not think she was ready for rehearsals.
"This time around I did not go back because I really did feel like it was too early. I was five weeks postpartum with Milan when the show would have had me start, and I just didn't think that my body or I was mentally there to be able to cope with something like that," she told Newsweek.
The Australian-American dancer would love to return next year because she's "not done" with her time on DWTS. Her and husband, Maksim Chmerkovskiy— a fellow DWTS professional dancer— even relocated from Malibu to be closer to the studio and cut down on their commute times so they would not be away from home for too many hours of the day.
But Murgatroyd realizes that even though she's keen to return to DWTS, the producers may have other ideas.
"I love Dancing With the Stars, if I could have done it this season, I would have because they're my family, I've been with them since what I was 22," she said. "It's been a long time that I've been around those people and I consider them part of my extended family."
"Though the show is ever evolving and changing and they bring in new pros, so I don't know if they will have me back, it's a waiting game," Murgatroyd added. "And if they don't have me back, then that's totally fine. Gosh, I've done 16 seasons with three children. So, I definitely had an amazing run on the show."
Even if her time on DWTS has come to an end, Murgatroyd has plenty of coals in the fire keeping her busy.
Aside from raising three young sons, she is nine years deep into running her own beauty company, Peta Jane Beauty, which she admitted started as a "side project which has turned into a full-time job."
"In the last two years it has really taken off and it's now become my main source of income. I mean, it's everything," Murgatroyd said. "It's gone really well and I'm really proud of it."
More recently her and Chmerkovskiy began their own YouTube series, The Maks and Peta Show, where they document their family lives. It was something they started after requests from fans and being pitched by networks to star in their own reality series.
They decided to control their own narrative when it came to how they wanted to show their family in the public domain.
"Everyone wants us to do a reality show and it's been pitched many times, but it's never felt right. And at the time and We didn't know how much of our family we wanted to share," Murgatroyd explained. "It's a very fine line and I like to keep things private. So, this was a big step to a YouTube channel."
But the family has not ruled out signing up to do a more official reality show, it's just a matter of finding the right relationship, because the pair are not willing to contrive drama for the sake of ratings.
"We're totally open to trying again with networks. But it just has to be the right deal... with the right people and with the right vision because a lot of studios just want the insane drama," she said. "While there's a little bit of drama that happens [at home] we're not insanely chaotic people, you won't see Maks and I throwing pots and pans at each other.
"I just can't create that and I'm not going to create that. So there's lines that I can't cross."
The Maks and Peta Show is available to watch on YouTube.
About the writer
Shannon Power is a Greek-Australian reporter, but now calls London home. They have worked as across three continents in print, ... Read more