Key Points
Jenna Johnson is breaking down Harry Shum Jr.’s viral scream on Dancing With the Stars.
The Grey’s Anatomy star let out a visceral howl during their Viennese waltz on Tuesday’s episode, leaving some fans puzzled.
“Okay, the scream that was heard around the world,” Johnson said on Wednesday, explaining that the scream’s origin came from a conversation cut from their rehearsal package.
There’s much more to Dancing With the Stars than meets the eye — beginning with all the footage cut from rehearsals each week.
Jenna Johnson and Harry Shum Jr. shared one of the most viral moments from Tuesday’s new episode — the second week of DWTS season 35 — and it’s all because of a loss of context due to a scene cut from their grueling Viennese waltz training sessions.
During their dance to “Iris” by Goo Goo Dolls, Shum Jr. let out a sudden and unexpected scream (1:55 mark) that took the judges, cohosts, and entire audience by surprise. Though they only ended up scoring 18 with the judges — a considerable drop from their strong premiere week showing of 21 — the scream has already proven to have an afterlife that will long outlast that bitter setback.
Humorously referring to it as the “scream that was heard around the world,” Johnson took her 1.3 million TikTok followers behind the scenes of what led to the scream with a video shared Wednesday.
“Obviously there were still 14 couples left in the competition, our packages were so short,” Johnson explained, referring to the videos produced each week that show the couples in rehearsal, planning out their big routines. “Harry and I had discussed this beautiful meaning behind the piece, and unfortunately there was no time to show everything that we had discussed.”
According to Johnson, the pair had discussed “so much yearning” imbued in their planned waltz, mingled with “our anxiety” and “how that makes us feel.” So, Shum Jr. asked his partner, “‘What does it feel like when you’re about to break? What do you want to do?’ And I was like, ‘Honestly, I just want to scream. Scream into a pillow, scream in my car. When you’re at that point where everything feels like it’s in your chest, the best way to release it is just breathing out and yelling.'”
Seeing that conversation just before their dance would have fully contextualized the scene. But it didn’t make the final cut. Nevertheless, Johnson asked her partner before stepping out on the ballroom floor, “‘Should we go crazy?’ And Harry’s like, ‘Yeah, we should always go crazy.'”
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly after the episode, Shum Jr. put the scream this way: “It was therapeutic. It just allowed this space where — usually, dance, you do it quietly. But being able to “have that breath” and “let it out” was a chance he couldn’t pass up.
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Echoing her comments to EW on Tuesday, Johnson noted in her TikTok on Wednesday, “I’m so grateful for a partner who’s down to do crazy things with me and that supports my ideas and just my art and my creativity, and that is willing to go there. The full visceral experience of his full body scream, it was just, I think my favorite part.”
Shum Jr. and Johnson face the judges on ‘Dancing With the Stars’
Credit: Disney/Christopher Willard
Johnson and Shum Jr., who has extensive prior dance experience, were frontrunners out the gate during premiere week. But both that pair and the other surprise leaders, Mark Ballas and Maura Higgins, fell several points in week 2. Instead, Olympians Ezra Frech and Amber Glenn have taken the lead.
Dancing With the Stars airs every Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC and Disney+, and streams the next day on Hulu.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly