Former DWTS Pro Reveals What It Would Take for Her to Return for Season 34

Lindsay Arnold revealed that she is very much open to returning to “Dancing with the Stars” – she just doesn’t know when.

In a November 2O24 interview on the “Lightweights” podcast, the former DWTS pro dancer was asked what it would take for her to come back after three seasons away from the ABC celebrity ballroom competition.

“I don’t know,” the mom of two told host Joe Vulpis. “I honestly don’t know, I get asked this so often and I really don’t have an answer.”

She added, “I feel like it’s got to just be a gut feeling for me. It’s not like a ‘oh they need to offer me this or somebody has to say this for me to do it’ or I have to be promised something. Like it’s not about that in the slightest.”

Arnold explained that it would have to be when she feels that the sacrifices that it takes to do the show are something that she’s willing to do. “And those sacrifices include uprooting my family, going to live in L.A. with my two girls,” she explained. “My husband works full time. It would definitely be a big lifestyle change. It would be taking my daughters away from the things that they’re doing now and just I feel like I would need to feel that drive of like oh it’s 100% worth it to do it. And I haven’t felt that quite yet.”

Lindsay Arnold Said There’s a Long Process to Return to DWTS

On the podcast, Arnold also explained that it’s not as easy as her just wanting to go back.  “Even if I was like I want to come back next season it’s not like I can say I’m back next season and then I’m back,” she shared. “Like, as most people know, every season the show decides which pros they want to use and there’s no guarantee. So it’s also another thing of like, I’d have to express the interest and then wait and hope they find a partner and find out a couple weeks before if I’m going to completely shift every plan that we have with my family.”

Arnold noted it would be easier for her to decide if she could be told she’d have a spot on the show months in advance, but that’s not how it works. She added that it would be “so fun” to be on the show alongside her younger sister Rylee, who has been a DWTS pro dancer for the past two seasons.

In January, Arnold told the “Off the Vine” podcast that she never claimed she was done with DWTS “forever.” “And that’s still my answer,” she said. “Like, I’m not done forever, but I also don’t have a set, like, ‘in one year, I will start doing ‘Dancing With the Stars’ again.’ I’m just going to have to take it a year at a time.”

Lindsay Arnold Didn’t Have an Official Audition For DWTS

Arnold competed on 10 seasons of “Dancing With the Stars” starting in 2013. She won the mirrorball trophy in season 25 with partner Jordan Fisher and last competed during season 30 in 2021.

She told Vulpis that as a young dancer “there was no audition process” for her. Arnold speculated that her appearance on a rival dance show “So You Think You Can Dance” served as an unknown audition for DWTS.

“I think there was an auditioning happening without me even knowing it,” she said. “That’s where the producers watched me, they saw how I was on camera, how my personality came out my dance ability and then I feel like they just kept watching. So I do think that was like my audition.”

Arnold had a five-season gap between her first and second seasons as a DWTS pro. That was because she was demoted to the troupe after her first season.

Speaking on Jason Tartick’s Trading Secrets podcast in January, the dancer noted she took a “total pay cut” when she was bounced to backup status at age 18.  “I just was not ready,” she explained. “I hadn’t been on the show ever to know how things work. In hindsight, it’s the best thing that happened to me that I went down to being a background dancer. … I think I needed more time to mature—first of all—and to really find out who I was as an entertainer. You really have to come into your own and figure out who you are as a person.”