This week’s edition of Dancing with the Stars was a TV-themed, and what would work better in that situation than the TV theme for the most popular show on television, The Walking Dead? Hoping to capitalize on the show’s popularity, Indycar driver James Hinchcliffe — who looks strikingly similar to Andrew Lincoln — and his professional dancing partner, Sharna Burgess, put together a killer Paso Doble (a style of dance modeled after Spanish bullfighting) set to The Walking Dead theme and gained clearance from the network. They we’re all set for the performance until a day before they were scheduled to go on.
For reasons that aren’t clear, AMC pulled clearance on the theme at the last minute, sending the two dancers scrambling. While they didn’t have enough time to choreograph another song, they were able to find a song similar to The Walking Dead theme, as Burgess explained to TV Guide:
“I could not be more proud of James and I as a team for what we were able to do in such a short space time. We only had a day and a half to get this dance together and on top of that, we had some added complications. We were supposed to do a specific scene from The Walking Dead, which had been cleared by the network, and then late on Tuesday AMC pulled clearance on the song!
So most of my Tuesday was spent trying to find either a new song with a new dance style, or another TV scene that had Paso Doble. All of which were impossible to find, given the time that we had! In the end,we found a song that sounded like The Walking Dead and we were able to do something that was inspired by the show.
I watched it back and I feel like James absolutely killed it. He was such a dominating male role in that number. Especially with three very tall, fantastic dancers dancing next to him.”
The result can be watched above, complete with walker dancers and a performance that ends with a zombie bite.
We’re still left wondering why AMC would grant clearance and then pull it. Maybe AMC didn’t want its bleak flagship series associated with ballroom dancing? Or maybe they didn’t think the performance was up to The Walking Dead standards Judges scored James Hinchcliffe and Sharna Burgess’s performance fourth to last on the night, just ahead of Marilu Henner, Ryan Lochte, and Rick Perry. Meanwhile, Amber Rose’s Game of Thrones inspired performance (set with the actual theme song) finished in the middle of the pack.
