‘Dancing With the Stars' Charlotte McKinney Fires Back at Bruno

The Carl’s Jr. model and her pro partner Keo Motsepe dish on their elimination.

ByABC News
March 30, 2015, 10:37 PM

— -- Charlotte McKinney, the model who became a sensation after she starred in a racy Super Bowl commercial for Carl's Jr., was voted off ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” Monday night, but it was judge Bruno Tonioli’s comments to the eliminated contestant that really caused an uproar in the ballroom.

"You're never going to win the Nobel prize for quantum physics, but you are easy on the eyes and you produce wonderful shapes,” Tonioli told McKinney, who has been bullied online for her figure so much this season that she ran out of a rehearsal crying last week.

“To be honest, I just really thought it was uncalled for,” McKinney said on “Good Morning America” of Tonioli’s comment. “Especially the week before, I’ve really been trying to be used as a platform for social media bullying and really just stop any negativity and just talk about being positive, and it just came out of nowhere.”

The model put on a strong face, however, adding, “It was silly but sometimes on live TV you just forget. I mean, I’ve heard it all. At the end of the day, just shake it off.” McKinney says she wasn’t shocked by her elimination because she wasn’t able to devote as much time to practicing as she would have liked.

“After shooting all day or any press all day and then going to practice you’re just emotionally, physically drained,” she explained. “I just think I had too much stress during all this and I didn’t get to focus.”

Even though she and Chris Soules were both in jeopardy of going home Monday based on their performances from last week’s show, McKinney ended up being voted off because she had the lowest combined total of viewer votes and judges' scores for her cha-cha.

“I learned so much from this experience and I’m so grateful and it’s been such an amazing ride and it is what it is,” she said, adding that her pro partner, Keo Motsepe, is now a “great friend that I’ll have for a lifetime.”

Before Monday’s elimination, each star danced one routine set to the show’s Latin night theme.

The Routines