EXCLUSIVE: Osher Günsberg spills on his ‘challenging’ experience on the reality show.

Dancing With The Stars' Helen Richey / Sonia Kruger.

Dancing With The Stars may feature its first-ever ‘villain’ this year. Photos: Channel 7

In the 21 years since Dancing With The Stars first premiered on TV, there has never once been a contestant who has received the ‘villain edit’. Unlike other reality shows where words and actions can be manipulated, misinterpreted or taken out of context, the Channel 7 series puts the focus on the celebrities’ dancing abilities and is often regarded as family-friendly viewing.

Ahead of the show’s highly anticipated return on Sunday night, however, one of this year’s contestants has suggested they may be portrayed as the first Dancing With The Stars ‘villain’. Osher Günsberg tells Yahoo Lifestyle that while he was excited to become a reality TV contestant for the very first time after hosting shows like Australian Idol, The Bachelor and The Masked Singer, he has no idea how he will be edited.

“I did my best to make sure I could give the judges a good reason to do the thing that they’re paid to do, and I think I did a pretty good job at that,” he shares. “You don’t want to be boring when you’re doing these kind of shows. You want to be like, how am I going to get these judges to do the thing that people love them for?

“I think I played my part pretty well, but they might go for the villain edit, I don’t know!”

Osher admits it “could be fun” being the ‘villain’ this season, but viewers will simply have to tune in to see how he is portrayed.

“It was hard enough showing up to work every day and standing next to Sonia Kruger, who, I mean, the Gold Logie I was nominated for is in her house. So that was fun,” he jokes.

Dancing With The Stars' Osher Günsberg.

Osher Günsberg admits he’s unsure how he’ll be portrayed on the show. Photos: Channel 7

Unlike previous seasons, where contestants were given around seven weeks to train before hitting the dance floor, Osher reveals that the 2025 cast received significantly less rehearsal time.

“Compared to previous seasons, we had very little time. Everybody’s trying to make television that looks even better than it did last year for even less money than before. So it was a very compressed schedule, and we didn’t have a lot of time to get ready,” he details.

“So look, I can tell you that my physiotherapist’s children are going to have really lovely Fijian holidays this winter, because I was there every second day. I was mostly strapping tape for a lot of it.”

Despite undergoing three hip replacements and admittedly not being able to walk in a straight line, Osher says he immediately said yes when he was asked to compete on Dancing With The Stars because he wanted to challenge himself.

“There’s no physical way I could have done it, considering all the s**t that’s gone on with my body. So I was like, well, stuff it. I might as well say yes and see what happens. Like, I can’t do it right now, so I might as well try and see what happens by trying,” he shares.

“It was an enormously challenging thing, but I really wanted to do it because I wanted to show my kids that it’s important to do things that are really hard, and it’s important to say yes to things that you’re not perfect at straight away, and that trying and failing is a part of learning. And yeah, there was a lot of failing in the learning part.”