Whoopi Goldberg and her “View” co-hosts criticized the “Dancing With the Stars” casting of convicted criminal Anna Delvey in Season 33 on Thursday’s talk show.
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Delvey is a con artist and fraudster who posed as a wealthy heiress to access upper-class New York social and art scenes from 2013 to 2017. Born to working-class parents in the Soviet Union, she emigrated from Russia to Germany with her family at the age of 16 in 2007. Though Delvey is mainly known for her scammer stunt, which earned her the Netflix series “Inventing Anna,” she was recently placed under house arrest with immigration authorities for violating the terms of her visa. She’s been living under arrest in New York while her deportation case is being reviewed, but the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement permitted her to compete in the show.
“I think back to all the families who’ve had family members arrested by ICE who have gone to the courts to get their dad or their brother or their mother back. This woman, they gave her permission to go do this,” Goldberg said on “The View,” before asking, “Now, should I think there’s a reason, is there a two-tiered system here with ICE?”
Co-host Sunny Hostin added, “If you think about it, [Delvey] defrauded so many people and then spent about two years in prison, and then had to spend another 18 months in prison for overstaying her welcome and overstaying her visa, so she committed another crime. And what is the, I don’t know, consequence of it? A bejeweled ankle monitor, a federal bejeweled ankle monitor and a spot on a television show.”
For her part, Delvey had previously brushed off any criticisms of her casting, saying, “It’s just not that serious. If someone is that upset about casting on a dancing show, I don’t know what to tell them.”
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Other “DWTS” Season 33 contestants are former NFL wide receiver and Super Bowl Champion Danny Amendola , former Bachelor from ABC’s “The Bachelor” Joey Graziadei, NBA veteran Dwight Howard, Olympians Ilona Maher and Stephen Nedoroscik, model Brooks Nader, actor Eric Roberts and others.
“I’m listening to people bitch about what’s going on at the border, and I listen to people bitch about all these people who shouldn’t be here. Well, what the hell, man! How does this work?” Goldberg said. She concluded by labeling the casting as disrespectful to “a lot of people who’ve been trying to make their way back to this country and families are torn apart.”
Season 33 of “Dancing With the Stars” debuts on ABC and Disney+ on Tuesday, Sept. 17, and will be available to stream on Hulu the next day.
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