Jenna Dewan on Dancing With the Stars entered the season 35 premiere on Wednesday night, when the women’s half of the two-night opener put her in a head-to-head first-week race for safety. Sarah Jane Nader was eliminated at the end of the episode, giving the premiere an immediate cut line and leaving Dewan’s score out of the reported results.
The women on Wednesday night performed to a No. 1 song from the year they were born, a format that turned the premiere into a comparison exercise instead of a standard opener. Amber Glenn and Pasha Pashkov opened with an 18/30, and Julia Stiles and Ezra Sosa matched it after a quickstep to Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5.
21/30 on Wednesday night
Maura Higgins and Mark Ballas led the women with a 21/30, becoming the first female celebrity to earn a seven paddle from all judges. That score set the highest mark on the women’s side of the premiere, while Harry Shum Jr. had led the men with a 21/30 on Tuesday night.
For Dewan, the useful takeaway is the format itself: the premiere split the cast by gender, and one celebrity went home each night. The episode therefore mattered less as a showcase and more as an early sorting round, where every number determined who entered the next week with margin and who did not.
Sarah Jane Nader Leaves
Sarah Jane Nader exited at the end of Wednesday night’s episode after competing with Hailey Bills. That left the women’s premiere with a clear elimination and kept the season 35 opener aligned with Tuesday night, when Conner Leavitt was also sent home at the end of the men’s episode.
Just ahead of Wednesday night’s broadcast, Nielsen put the first premiere episode at 6.67 million viewers, up 24 percent from last year’s 5.38 million and the biggest debut audience since season 29 in September 2020. ABC’s website also crashed during Tuesday night’s live voting, and Alfonso Ribeiro said the show was accepting votes only by text for that episode.
What Dewan Still Faces
Jenna Dewan was in the competition, but the episode did not put a public score next to her name in the facts available here. That leaves Wednesday night as an opening-week checkpoint rather than a clean read on her position, with the next phase of season 35 carrying the contestants who survived the two-night premiere into the continuing competition.
