"Dancing With the Stars” pro Ezra Sosa says Jen Affleck and Whitney Leavitt could have a strong advantage on the show’s upcoming season. “… you see in their TikToks, they’re doing their thing,” Sosa explained to Us Weekly. “You can sense that they have a little bit of dance ability.”
Like many fans, Sosa is “obsessed” with “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” So naturally he was thrilled when two of the show’s stars were cast as contestants on “DWTS” season 34. And the fact that they’ve been performing routines as part of MomTok for years will likely help them in the competition.
“Anyone with any kind of dance experience will have a leg up,” Sosa shared. “You’ll have someone who’s literally never even step-touched before … so you’re working from the ground up.”
But Affleck and Leavitt clearly have the basics down. “They can understand rhythm, they can understand timing,” Sosa said. “So they definitely have a leg up.”
Dance & the Mormon Community
Like Affleck and Leavitt, Sosa hails from Utah and has connections to the Mormon community. And so do many other “DWTS” pros including siblings Derek and Julianne Hough, Lindsay and Rylee Arnold, and Witney Carson, Jenna Johnson, and Brandon Armstrong.
According to Sosa, “Everyone in Utah has a thing.” He continued, “My thing was dance, but my neighbor’s thing was piano. Every kid had a sport and activity. … And the dance culture in Utah is really big too, especially with ballroom.”
Sosa went on to explain how ballroom dancing became so popular in the community. “It was really brought into [Brigham Young University] as a way for men to treat women.” He added, “There’s never enough Mormons on ‘Dancing With the Stars’ … I definitely feel like it’s gonna bring an interesting storyline to season 34.”
Why the ‘Mormon Wives’ Feel Familiar to Sosa
Having grown up in Utah, Sosa has had a lot of experience with Mormon moms. “Especially the moms I dealt with, because I grew up in a dance studio … so the moms I was around were dance moms,” he explained.
As for his affinity for “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” Sosa said that as a kid he observed that you don’t mess with Utah dance moms’ kids or their money. “… I got to see a lot of interesting personalities growing up,” Sosa shared. “I loved getting to see kind of similar characters on a TV show.”
