Dancing With the Stars pro Witney Carson is a two-time mirrorball champion, but she still hasn’t forgotten when her season 27 partner, Milo Manheim, was robbed of his own victory.
“I feel like that season really was a gut punch for me, where it was like, ‘That should have been his win,’” Carson, 32, exclusively told Us Weekly on Thursday, May 7, while attending the Vulture Reality Masterminds Celebration in New York City. “It felt like I fell short for him.”
Carson — who won her first DWTS championship with Alfonso Ribeiro in 2014 and her second with partner Robert Irwin in 2025 — told Us that making it to the winner’s circle a second time coincidentally brought her loss with Manheim, 25, back into the limelight as well.
“It was actually crazy,” Carson explained of her and Manheim’s season 27 finale dance blowing up on the internet last year. “I think this younger generation started to catch on to that. And obviously people love Milo so much, which rightfully so, he’s amazing.”
She recalled that when footage of the duo’s performances began to resurface, “people started to be, like, ‘Justice for Milo.’ Like, ‘Let’s do this.’ And so it makes me happy.”
For the uninitiated, Carson and Manheim were the runners-up during the 2018 season, which Sharna Burgess won with partner Bobby Bones.
Burgess, 40, and Bones’ victory was controversial among DWTS fans and pros as Bones, 46, and his partner consistently scored lower than their finale competitors all season. (The other final pairings included Alexis Ren and Alan Bersten and Evanna Lynch and Keo Motsepe.)
Amid the controversy and lingering backlash Bones received for his win, the radio personality revealed in November 2025 that he returned his trophy.
“Like, what did I do? I had a great attitude. I worked hard, and here we are, like six years later, I’m still catching strays out of nowhere,” Bones said on TikTok after former DWTS host Tom Bergeron told Parade that Bones’ win was his biggest “surprise” of the series, which “hurt” the radio personality’s feelings.
Bones explained, “So, I sent the trophy back. They don’t want me to be a part of the show, obviously. So I don’t wanna be somewhere that doesn’t want me to be there.”
Bergeron, for his part, apologized for his remarks, saying in a social media statement at the time, “Bobby, it wasn’t my intention to hurt your feelings. My ‘ouch’ was based on my honest feeling that your win spoke to a need to address the balance between judge and viewer voting.”
Carson, meanwhile, told Us on Thursday that she felt like when Irwin, 22, won DWTS last year it was almost a redemption arc for her and Manheim, who was there to witness it.
“Milo was there in the audience when I won with Robert, and it was very much [a feeling that] people were rallying behind us with Robert because of Milo too,” she shared. “You know, they wanted justice for him.”
Looking back at her time on DWTS, Carson pointed to her freestyle with Manheim — a dance in the rain that has since become iconic — as one of her all-time favorites.
“I love that dance so much. I actually remember choreographing that dance and then camera blocking day, I was full-on crying because I thought I had made a mistake,” she revealed. “I thought Milo needed something more upbeat for a freestyle, rather than this, like, cool, kind of sultry rain dance. And then it turned out to be, like, one of my favorite dances ever.”
Despite feeling like Manheim was robbed, Carson is glad she won her second mirrorball with Irwin, noting the new season now has less pressure for her.
“I think coming back off of the win, I really just want to, more than anything, just have fun,” she told Us. “I just want to dance. That’s it.”
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