Strictly fans have been left furious after Carlos Gu and Karen Carney’s performance for Movie Week. The dance partners performed a Cha Cha Cha to She’s A Lady from the 2000 action comedy film Miss Congeniality starring Sandra Bullock.
Last week, the couple scored 20 points, leaving them in sixth on the leaderboard with a total of 51. Their first live show performance of the series saw them top the leaderboard, after scoring 31 from an incredible jive. Speaking about tonight’s performance, some of the judges were not as impressed as they had been in previous weeks.
The former women’s footballer is still yet to replicate the success from the first dance in the live performances. In an action-packed and glitzy dance to She’s A Lady, Karen wore the famous Miss Congeniality sash and an eye-catching pink dress, while Carlos wore a black suit, white shirt and a black tie.
Receiving feedback from the performance, guest judge Cynthia Erivo said: “you let loose and I was so pleased, you’re wonderful”. Head judge Shirley Ballas said “power-packed, you executed difficult choreography but refine it”.
Anton Du Beke told Karen and Carlos: “wow, too much physicality and front-on at times but terrific”. And Craig Revel Horwood was less of a fan of the performance, telling the contestant: “spiky, sort out your arms but you put every inch of yourself in and have fantastic potential”. Motsi finished off “poised and plenty of attack”.
However, fans were not happy with one of the results given to the TV pundit. Anton gave a 7, Shirley gave a 7, Motsi gave a 7 and Craig was harsh with a score of 4, totalling a score of 25, an improvement on last week but a huge blow with one extremely low score.
On X, One fan wrote “that four from Craig is an absolute insult” and another said “Four, Craig? F*****g four.” The complaints continued with “A FOUR?! Don’t be silly Craig! Foolish mark that.”
Further posts included “A FOUR CRAIG ARE WE OK” and “a four from craig for karen and carlos is CRAZY”, a shocked looking Claudia Winkleman image was uploaded with the caption “Craig gave Karen the same score he gave Ross and Chris” by one X user.
Karen has opened up about a spine condition that impacted her performance on the BBC dance competition. The 38-year-old former England player and ITV’s lead female sports presenter suffers from a curved spine, making it “really hard” for her to open her posture up in the way she needs to for ballroom dances.
Last week in a rehearsal clip, she admitted: “There’s certain elements I won’t be able to do as well as I’d like to.” On It Takes Two earlier this week, she told host Fleur East she had really been struggling to correct her posture. She said: “It’s a real physical challenge. Like, it’s really, really hard. I have a posture aid.”