Despite their three-year age difference, Derek Hough and Julianne Hough have become the twin lodestars of Dancing With the Stars. But when they started back in 2007, the siblings shared a playful rivalry that kept the competition fierce.
“When she went [on the show], I was like, ‘Oh, okay, now I have to go on.’ And then she won that season,” Derek revealed in a new joint interview with US Weekly on Wednesday.
Though their time on DWTS commenced nearly two decades ago, Julianne, who joined a season before Derek, remembered their playful competitiveness stirring up even further back. “He would smoke me in the Latin competitive dance world we [were in] as kids. But I was like, ‘Oh, you’re coming to my turf now.'”
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The Houghs were reared in the same familial environment, underwent the same ballroom training as youngsters, and started on DWTS the same year. But their journeys on the show greatly diverged as the years passed.
Julianne won her first two seasons alongside partners Apolo Anton Ohno and Hélio Castroneves. Derek soon caught up, winning his second season on the show with TV personality Brooke Burke. He would go on to win the competition a staggering six times. Though Julianne kept her trophy collection at just the two, Derek noted that she’d often trot out a special explanation that put their accomplishments in context.
“We joke around. She’ll say, ‘I won the show twice,’ and I’ll be like, ‘I won six times,’ and she goes, ‘Yeah, but I was only on the show for five seasons.’ She won two out of five and I won six out of 17, so her ratio is better,” he shared.
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Derek and Julianne also took very different paths to arrive where they are today, serving as a judge (Derek) and cohost (Julianne) of season 34. After Julianne departed the series as a pro following season 8, she returned to guest judge seasons 18, 19, 25, and 30, and sat in as a full judge alongside Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli, and the late Len Goodman on seasons 19, 20, 21, 23, and 24.
Derek, meanwhile, powered through as a pro parter from season 5 to season 23, only briefly hitting pause for seasons 12 and 22.
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Julianne says she now reveres the “sacredness” of her bond with Derek, and with their three sisters, Sharee, Marabeth, and Katherine. But she’s been open in the past about rough patches she’s gone through with her older brother.
Last August, Julianne opened up about the impact that Derek’s wife, Hayley Erbert, undergoing an emergency craniectomy had on their sibling relationship.
“The thing that hurts the most is when we’re not connected,” she said, but explained that “something happens and it just is like a clean slate… Especially with what just happened with Derek and Hayley, there could have been little things just kind of looming or lingering in the background, but when you’re left with life-or-death situations, nothing else matters.”