Carrie Ann Inaba has been a staple of Dancing With the Stars‘ judging panel since its inaugural first season back in 2005. Like the other judges, she’s received a lot of love and criticism over the years depending on her scoring and commentary on fans’ favorite contestants and is sometimes referred to as the “mean” judge.
In fact, Inaba has occasionally spoken out about getting hate from fans over some of her judging decisions but said it hasn’t affected the way she scores the show’s stars. “Just so you all know, for all of you trying to bully me about it, I judge the way I judge from my background,” she told audiences on The Talk in November 2020, per Us Weekly. “That is my job to do it and I will always do it based on my own conscience, not because you’re trying to tell me what to do.”
If Inaba is drawing on her background as a dancer and performer to judge DWTS, it’s safe to say she has a depth of experience to pull from as she’s been dancing from a very young age. Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, the part Chinese, part Japanese, and part Irish DWTS judge was still a teenager when she began a career in singing, dancing, and choreography.
Why is Carrie Ann Inaba famous?
Long before Inaba became known for her sometimes brutally honest feedback on Dancing With the Stars, she became famous in Japan as a pop singer. Inaba left for Japan after winning a talent show in her native Hawaii in 1986 when she was just 18 years old. She trained to be a pop singer and even made it into the top 50, though she described the experience to People as “horrifying.” She said, “I was singing lyrics phonetically from a lyric sheet. It was horrifying. Being there I realized it has nothing to do with how artistic you are. Your face becomes a logo they sell.”
Inaba returned to the U.S. afterward and her dancing career really took off when she appeared on the Fox TV show In Living Color from 1990 to 1992. Dancing as one of the “Fly Girls” alongside Jennifer Lopez, Inaba said she felt “so at home” with her fellow multicultural dancers. She also danced in Madonna’s Girlie Show World Tour in 1993, a show that required her to shave her head. Off the stage, Inaba also appeared in many movies, often as a dancer, and is perhaps best known for her acting role as Fook Yu in the 2002 film Austin Powers in Goldmember.
Outside of judging Dancing With the Stars, Inaba also joined The Talk in 2017 as a guest co-host and was promoted to permanent co-host in 2019. She stepped away from the show after three seasons as a full-time co-host in 2021, Deadline reported.
What is Carrie Ann Inaba’s dancing experience?
Though fans may sometimes disagree with her opinions, Inaba is well-placed to judge Dancing With the Stars given her long history in the industry both as a dancer and a choreographer. According to her bio on CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment), Inaba studied choreography at the University of California, Irvine, and contemporary dance in Los Angeles, California.
Her choreography credits include such shows as American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, and the Miss America Pageant. She also debuted a hit competition show on ABC in 2008 with her fellow DWTS judge Bruno Tonioli, Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann, which saw 17 million viewers tune in to the premiere, according to her bio on ABC.
Is Carrie Ann Inaba in a relationship?
Inaba is currently single but has been in a few public relationships during her time in the spotlight, namely with Dancing With the Stars pro Artem Chigvintsev from 2006 to 2009. They met when Chigvintsev was competing in So You Think You Can Dance and had broken up long before he joined DWTS in 2014.
After her split from Chigvintsev, Inaba dated Jesse Sloan, an accountant. They met through dating site eHarmony in 2009 and Sloan proposed to the DWTS judge on-camera in 2011 on Live with Regis and Kelly, ABC News reported. The couple broke up in September 2012.
Inaba became a fiancée for the second time some years later after General Hospital star Robb Derringer proposed to the dancer in December 2016. However, they called off their engagement less than a year later in 2017, Us Weekly reported.
What is Carrie Ann Inaba’s illness?
Inaba has made no secret of the fact that she struggles with some difficult illnesses daily and has sometimes opened up emotionally on Dancing With the Stars when relating to some contestants’ health struggles.
Inaba has been diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome, a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease, as well as lupus, fibromyalgia, arthritis, and chronic fatigue syndrome. She shared with Health Digest, “Sjögren’s Syndrome is an autoimmune condition where your immune system attacks your moisture-producing glands, so that includes your tears. Your ability to make tears is affected, and so are salivary glands and your skin moisture.”
Inaba said she was constantly battling chronic pain and inflammation and began looking for ways to manage it. She told the publication that she changed the way she ate, did hyperbaric oxygen chambers, and sought out a physical therapist to make sure she moved just a little bit every day. “I was making sure that every day, no matter how much pain I was in, that I did some sort of physical movement,” she shared.
Inaba launched her website — Carrie Ann Conversations — to share some of her insights and experiences on her health and wellness journey and open the door to others suffering from similar diseases to connect with each other and find resources.