Cat Deeley is praising So You Think You Can Dance judge Allison Holker’s “healthy” outlook following the death of her husband, Stephen “tWitch” Boss.
“She’s been very, very open about talking about tWitch and I think that is really healthy because, in actual fact, the only way to take a terribly, terribly devastating thing is to try and make it positive,” Deeley, 47, exclusively told Us Weekly on Thursday, March 7, while discussing season 18 of the dance competition. “That’s the only way you can process that as a human being. What she’s done is she’s turned it around and she’s like, ‘I am going to talk about it.’ And the more those lines of communication are open for everybody, and the more we discuss and the more we don’t hide away, I think the better it is for everybody — for everybody’s mental health and everybody watching at home and everybody on the show.”
Deeley, who began hosting SYTYCD during season 2 in 2006, further noted that Holker, 36, has handled the devastating situation “so beautifully.”
“We were talking about it the other day and I said, ‘I have to say you just [have] handled yourself with poise,’” she recalled.
Deeley has known Holker and Boss since their respective seasons of SYTYCD, which aired in 2006 and 2008. The couple, who wed in 2013, met on season 7 when they were tapped as “All-Star” mentors for the first time.
Boss died by suicide at the age of 40 in December 2022. He is survived by Holker and their three kids: Weslie, 15, Maddox, 7, and Zaia, 3. (Weslie is Holker’s daughter from a previous relationship, whom Boss adopted.)
Following Boss’ passing, the SYTYCD and dance communities rallied around Holker and her kids to help keep his memory alive.
“He was always just a super charming, super smart, incredibly loving, gentle man,” Deeley remembered of Boss, noting she has “so many” memories with him. “He was always a big sweater, and I would say that, too. He’d come off stage and he’d be soaking wet and he’d be like, ‘No, no, I’m not going to hug you. I’m not going to.’ I’m like, ‘Come on, bring it in, bring it in.’”
A separate memorable encounter occurred after Deeley watched his competitive solo routine to Midnight Touch’s ”Midas Touch.”
“Another time he was on stage and he’d done this routine and he got a grill in his mouth. I was like, ‘Come on, hand [it over]. I can be street in my British accent,’” she joked. “So I put his glasses on and his grill, everybody was like, ‘Ah!’ I was like, ‘Don’t care.’”
When So You Think You Can Dance debuted on FOX in 2005, a panel of dance experts were tapped to discover the best up-and-coming performers. Nigel Lythgoe, who cocreated the competition series alongside Simon Fuller, served as one of the longtime judges since the season 1 premiere. However, after cueing the audition music and marveling […]
Holker joined the So You Think You Can Dance judging panel for season 18, which premiered on Monday, March 4, sitting next to Maksim Chmerkovskiy and JoJo Siwa.
“[Allison’s] obviously got the experience of the show and she knows all of that too, but she’s also got a lot of heart and she adds that dimension to it as well,” Deeley told Us.
As Holker, Chmerkovskiy, 44, and Siwa, 20, search for America’s Top Dancer, the contestants are in for a range of new challenges.
“So, there’s basically two massive changes to the show. The first … we’re going to put all the dancers into a house together so you get to know everybody,” Deeley teased to Us. “And the second big change is we’re going to set real-world challenges for the dancers. So essentially, who could come out off the show and be a professional dancer tomorrow? They’ll have challenges, like a tour challenge, a Broadway challenge, an ad campaign challenge … and [handle] all those different elements that you have to have to become a professional working dancer and be successful.”
So You Think You Can Dance airs Mondays on Fox at 7 p.m. ET.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi