‘Dancing With the Stars’ contestant Phaedra Parks called Gene Simmons ‘a total ding-a-ling.’
“I loved the routine, and I think we did good, despite Gene Simmons being a total ding-a-ling,” Parks revealed to Page Six’s Desiree Murphy in the ballroom on Tuesday night.
Parks further slammed the KISS bassist, saying, “I figured he [Simmons] didn’t like short black women.”
Simmons got criticism for his comments as a guest judge on ‘Hair Metal Night’ on ‘DWTS.’ The judges scored the performances from 1 to 10, and Simmons was booed for giving strange scores.
He paid more attention to looks than to the dancing and offered little feedback. He gave a lower score to Phaedra and Val Chmerkovskiy but later gave a perfect score to Brooks Nader and Gleb Savchenko.
“Hey Reggie, you’ve got a beautiful woman right beside you who can twist it and turn it and knows how to move it and all that,” the rocker told the actor Reginald VelJohnson. “But I want to tell you, as a guy that’s been on the stage for half a century around the world, I’m kind of a big deal, Reggie. It’s all in the attitude. And you’ve got something in that beautiful face. They love you.”
Later, Gene defended his remarks on the show. Some people called his comments ‘creepy,’ but Simmons doesn’t think they are and stands by what he said. “All media is clickbait. I stand by every word I said,” he told Daily Mail.
The musician added, “I had a great time. The contestants were great. The show was great. Watch the show. It was a lot of fun. But media? Everybody’s got something to say. Watch the show. It was a lot of fun. Everybody had a great time.”
Simmons’ episode featured contestants dancing to popular hair metal songs. Joel Hoekstra from Whitesnake played a guitar solo for a cover of KISS’ ‘Rock and Roll All Nite,’ along with songs by Poison, Warrant, Bon Jovi, and others.