Selma Blair took her latest performance to a whole new level by being blindfolded throughout her Dancing With the Stars routine. Selma and Sasha Farber stunned during Bond Night with their rumba, which earned a 28 out of 40 from the judges. The 50-year-old wasn’t intimidated whatsoever and said performing blindfolded felt “amazing.” She told reporters, including HollywoodLife after the show, “Sasha’s never far from me, like at all, but it was a way to not have as much sensory overload in my head because it’s exciting and there’s so much going on and people moving, so it was a way to buffer it.”
Sasha explained that he noticed Selma would “close her eyes a lot” and feel “a disconnection from her brain to her body on the left side” due to her multiple sclerosis battle. “Learning steps for Selma is challenging in the sense where I can see her body try to do it, and I know that she can do it, but it’s like the message stops,” Sasha said. “And it doesn’t allow it to happen, and she closes her eyes. So I found that she would always be comfortable in that situation, and I wanted to see how this would help the performance. I remember putting it [the blindfold] on her, and she had goosebumps.”
Selma admitted that being blindfolded allowed her to get “in my body for the first time because sometimes I let a lot get me, and it’s like you’re just kind of going through it in a little bit of a blackout because I’m not really trained yet and performing with MS, too. Whenever I try and focus and really get intention, I get a little bit of a traffic jam. The blindfold was an ingenious way to add a bit of style, but also a challenge that was kind of comforting to me and brought me closer to my partner.”
Sasha pointed out that there’s something about this ballroom dancing experience that is “really helping Selma with the MS.” Selma “absolutely” agreed with her partner. Sasha added, “I think it’s a communication and a connection of having someone there to control her, so there’s less worry and, yes, there are times but it’s less because she’s actually moving. She’s dancing. She wouldn’t be able to do it alone, but with someone there, it really does activate…” The Cruel Intentions star finished, “It allows me to push through without quitting.
Selma has been open about her battle with MS. The actress has experienced MS symptoms since childhood, but she wasn’t officially diagnosed since 2018. “It felt like giving birth. The release of it. The catharsis of it. But more than anything, I was overwhelmed by a sense of relief,” Selma wrote of her diagnosis in her memoir, Mean Baby.
The Legally Blonde star also revealed to Entertainment Tonight that she does “pass out a lot” due to her MS. She even fainted before rehearsal but still came to practice anyway. “The thing is, I pass out a lot,” Selma said. “It’s part of the reason I have Scout [her service dog] and it doesn’t mean I lose consciousness [or] it’s a whole ambulance experience, it’s something that I lose my vision, gravity pulls me down and I’m very disoriented and gone for a spell. He’s kind of there to also catch me, you know, make the ground a little closer with his back.”
Selma and Sasha survived another elimination and will be taking on Disney+ Night next week. Charlie’s Angels alum Cheryl Ladd and Louis van Amstel were sent home in week 3. Dancing With the Stars airs Mondays on Disney+.