Joe Amabile had an impressive run on Dancing with the Stars, but making it to the semifinals is not exactly the most memorable part of his experience.
On the Dec. 17 episode of the Bachelor Happy Hour podcast, Amabile, 38, and his wife Serena Pitt, welcomed reigning champs Jenna Johnson and Joey Graziadei, but before they could dive into the pair’s incredible season, Amabile asked Johnson about her near-death experience when they were paired together on season 27.
“Jenna, remember when I almost snapped your neck?” Amabile asked his former partner, who he competed with but was eliminated in the semifinals.
“Halloween episode, I’ll never forget,” Johnson said.
Amabile admitted he “almost killed” his partner, when the ending of their tango didn’t go as planned. “I swear on my life, she almost died. It was insane.”
Craig Sjodin/ABC
The irony of the accident was that Johnson said the performance was Amabile’s “best dance” from the show.
“It was the ending move. We had, like, one lift. It was the ending move,” she remembered. “He put his arm in the wrong spot. And I was, like, gonna do a backflip.”
The backflip didn’t happen, of course, as Amabile accidentally had his arms in “the only position I couldn’t lift her.” He said that making the mistake that he made was the one thing Johnson had warned him about. “Like, just don’t do this. And it was what I did.”
“But we survived. I didn’t snap my neck,” Johnson said, clearly not holding any grudge.
The story reminded Amabile that he could never really recall a routine following each week’s performance.
“Jenna would walk off stage when we would get done dancing, and she’d look at me and she’d go, ‘What happened? And I would look at her and say … I would just black out every time.”
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After Amabile was announced as part of the season 27 DWTS cast, he told PEOPLE it was a “good opportunity,” though he admitted, “I don’t know how to dance.”
He also wasn’t exactly up to date on the show. “I don’t remember the last season I saw but it was probably a couple years ago. If I watch now, I’ll psych myself out. It will be really bad. I’ll probably be throwing up,” he said.
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When he walked into the studio to meet Johnson for the first time, he once again spoke about his inability to dance, but the moment was mostly overshadowed by Johnson’s excitement that he was her partner. She excitedly called him “Grocery Store Joe,” the nickname he’d earned from his time on Becca Kufrin’s season of The Bachelorette.
“I’m so embarrassed because I just fan-girled so hard, and he doesn’t even know who I am,” she then admitted.
Amabile also said he wanted to drop his Bachelor nickname for something new: “Dancing Joe.”
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