Cheryl Burke Apologizes For Suicide Reference While Slamming ‘Dancing With The Stars’ Partner Ian Ziering

Former “Dancing with the Stars” professional dancer Cheryl Burke issued a mea culpa, but it wasn’t to her onetime partner, Ian Ziering. Instead, the dancer apologized for linking her experience with an apparent desire for suicide.

“In the heat of an interview conversation, I used a phrase that seemingly makes light of suicide, and I deeply regret it,” Burke tweeted Sunday. “I have many friends and family members who struggle with depression and thoughts of suicide. To have said something that seemingly makes a mockery of what they’ve gone through and what they live with is something that I apologize for. I never meant to hurt anyone or to trivialize the topic. I was out of line and for that I apologize.”

Burke added: “I’ve always lived by the rule that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Recently and regrettably, I broke that rule.”

However, Burke didn’t offer an apology to Ziering. During an interview on the podcast “Allegedly with Theo Von & Matthew Cole Weiss,” she said the former “90210” star was her least favorite partner. “[Working with him] made me want to slit my wrists,” Burke said.

“I was, like, crying to the executives. I was, like, ‘Is there any way to please just eliminate us?’ They’re like, ‘We can’t. We can’t do that.’ And I swear, every time I asked, we just kept going. We would last till the end,” she said during the podcast last week. “I didn’t try [to get people to vote for us].”

Ziering has not responded to Burke’s negative assessment. In previous interviews, he praised the 31-year-old dancer. “Cheryl Burke is amazing. She’s very patient — thank God for that because I keep stepping on my own toes — and is able to communicate in a way that I understand,” he told the online site BuddyTV in 2007. Burke left the ABC series in 2014.

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