Selma Blair Is Happy to Be Here

They parted ways, but Farber couldn’t shake the idea. “I love to teach, and I love to see my partners grow,” he tells SELF. His friend Nastia Liukin, the Olympic gymnast and a former DWTS competitor, encouraged him to write Blair a heartfelt note, so he did, and then dropped it off at Blair’s house. Blair was inspired by the overture, and agreed to try rehearsing with Farber briefly to see how it would feel. She was surprised to find that, accompanied by an experienced and reliable dance partner, she really enjoyed herself.

She called up her team, including her longtime manager and close friend, Troy Nankin, to get them on board with the idea. “I think I actually need this,” she remembers telling them. “I think it’s important for people with chronic illness or disabilities to see what they can do. I deserve to have a good time and try.”

The physical intensity of DWTS makes leaping into the show an audacious move for many new cast members—Blair says she typically rehearsed for four hours a day in the week leading up to broadcast—but it also represented a more mainstream shift to Blair. After so many years as one of Hollywood’s unconventional, supporting characters, she was still worried that she wouldn’t look the part. “I don’t do well on TV, historically,” Blair says. “I don’t really have that commercial face with the bleached teeth and the Botox and the whole thing that’s very camera-friendly.”

DWTS was, in her words, “the biggest commercial thing I’ve done.” Its aesthetic is prime-time schmaltz and sequins, at odds with the easy and understated Hollywood glamour Blair has always projected. “In the past I’d be like, ‘No, I don’t want to admit to people my career’s ‘over’ and go on Dancing,’” she says. Now, “I realize what a vehicle it is.” These days, she says, it’s the main thing people recognize her from.

Blair was convinced she would only last one episode before being voted off and was surprised to find that Farber’s instinct had been right: She both loved the experience and desperately wanted to win it all. “I felt like I was in college again and you love the class,” she says. “You know, like, I never knew I loved printmaking! It immediately transformed my way of thinking, and it immediately put a pep in my step.” 

She felt the physical benefits almost instantaneously and adjusted her diet to support the intense training schedule. Whereas in the past she might have only eaten, in her words, “some Cheetos and a charcuterie platter once my son went to bed,” Blair found that, on DWTS, she “just wanted fuel.” She hired a friend to cook nutritious meals for her and Arthur while the show was filming. “It changed my relationship to food and exercise,” she says. “I had energy and I slept well.”

In her first appearance—which aired on September 19, barely a month after she agreed to join the show—she and Farber danced a Viennese waltz. Blair wore a shimmering purple dress and let Farber spin her in circles, hovering inches over the floor. “Specific steps didn’t work, so you had to dig deeper to find something that works for her,” Farber says. He gave her days off of training when she needed to rest and made sure he had one hand supporting her at all times when they were dancing—a gesture that Blair appreciated. “She is an incredible, incredible student,” Farber adds.