Guillermo Rodriguez entered Dancing with the Stars Season 35 as one of the competition’s biggest personalities, but very few viewers expected his dancing journey to become this interesting.
The Jimmy Kimmel Live! star had a difficult beginning. During the opening week, Guillermo and professional partner Witney Carson earned just 10 points, immediately placing him among the lowest-scoring contestants of the season.
Week 2 brought another challenge when Guillermo performed a paso doble to Rihanna’s “Where Have You Been.” His score improved to 12 out of 30, but he still found himself near the bottom of the leaderboard.
Even with those low scores, viewers kept Guillermo in the competition, giving him another opportunity to prove that his ballroom journey could become about improvement rather than where he started.
That opportunity arrived with Yacht Rock Night.
For Week 3, Guillermo and Witney were assigned a foxtrot to Rupert Holmes’ “Escape (The Piña Colada Song),” a completely different challenge from the more aggressive paso doble he had performed the previous week.
The slower ballroom style required Guillermo to focus more closely on timing, posture, footwork and smoothly moving around the floor with Witney.
And that is exactly why viewers have been watching his progress so carefully.
Guillermo entered the competition with very little formal dance experience, and Witney had already revealed before the season that he was working hard and improving during rehearsals.
Compared with his earliest routines, his continued willingness to attempt more technical choreography has become an important part of his story.
Witney has also had the unusual challenge of designing routines that highlight Guillermo’s personality while gradually giving him more actual ballroom movement to perform.
That balance has become one of the most entertaining parts of their partnership. Guillermo can still make an audience laugh simply by being himself, but each new week gives him another chance to show that he is taking the dancing seriously too.
His survival after two difficult scoring weeks already demonstrated that viewers have connected strongly with him. Despite sitting near the bottom of the leaderboard, Guillermo continued receiving enough audience support to remain in the competition.
Even Jimmy Kimmel has joked about Guillermo’s unexpected popularity while also acknowledging that his longtime sidekick has continued improving from one performance to the next.
That doesn’t suddenly make Guillermo the technical favorite for the Mirrorball Trophy, especially with several experienced performers producing much higher scores. But his journey has become one of the clearest examples this season of why Dancing with the Stars isn’t only about who arrives with the most dance ability.
For Guillermo, Yacht Rock Night represented another chance to show just how different a contestant can look after only a few weeks of serious training. Whether he can keep that progress going remains to be seen, but viewers who initially expected a short comedy-filled run are now getting something much more interesting — a contestant genuinely trying to become a dancer in front of them.
