Tom Bergeron said he had 'fun being fired' from 'Dancing With the Stars': 'The show that I left is not the show that I loved'

• Tom Bergeron said he "wasn't surprised" when he was fired from "Dancing With the Stars."
• In fact, he said: "Erin [Andrews] and I had more fun being fired than virtually anybody."

Tom Bergeron said that he had "fun being fired" from "Dancing With the Stars" in 2020.

Bergeron, who cohosted "DWTS" for 28 seasons and 14 years, opened up about his departure from the long-running dancing competition show on the podcast "Bob Saget's Here for You" in September.

"The show that I left is not the show that I loved," Bergeron told Saget, according to People. "So at the end of the season that turned out to be my last season, I even knew. I took everything out of my dressing room that I really wanted."

Bergeron and his cohost, Erin Andrews (who started hosting alongside Bergeron in 2014), exited "DWTS" in July 2020, with Bergeron announcing on Twitter at the time that he had been "just informed" that the show "will be continuing without me."

ABC, the network behind the show, followed up with a statement a day later explaining that "DWTS" is heading in "a new creative direction" amid Bergeron and Andrews' departure. Supermodel Tyra Banks was named as a replacement host shortly afterward.

Looking back at his departure from "DWTS," Bergeron told Saget: "I wasn't surprised that that was my last season. So, there was no blue period. Erin and I had more fun being fired than virtually anybody."

During his final "DWTS" run, Bergeron openly criticized the show for casting former White House press secretary Sean Spicer as a contestant on season 28 in 2019.

After the cast announcements were made in August of that year, Bergeron tweeted that he was expecting "DWTS" to "be a joyful respite from our exhausting political climate and free of inevitably divisive bookings from ANY party affiliations."

Without naming Spicer in particular, Bergeron told Saget in September that he would have preferred to stay away from politics because "we were on the cusp of an election year" in 2019.

He continued that leading up to production on season 28, he had lunches with two executives from the show who "agreed wholeheartedly" with Bergeron on not casting political contestants "until they booked the show." (According to Deadline, former "DWTS" executive producer Andrew Llinares was possibly one of the people Bergeron spoke to.)

Bergeron said that he was "caught by surprise" and felt "a bit misled" when he found out that Spicer, a prominent conservative figure, had been cast on the show.

"I just thought it would be a nice place for everybody to take a break a few hours a week," he explained.

Bergeron added that when he ran into the contestant in question (possibly Spicer) in the hallway, Bergeron told him: "Look, whether it was you or somebody from the other major party who I would have voted for, that wasn't the issue. I would have released the statement if it was somebody I would have supported. I don't think they belonged here."