DwtS In-Season Update: Sara Evans Quits

Sara Evans announced Thursday that she's leaving Dancing with the Stars, after filing for divorce from her husband, Craig Schelske. Nashville entertainment reporter Brad Schmitt has excerpts from the press release.

The reasons Sara cited in the divorce papers were numerous and sordid. Among them were her husband's infidelity, alcohol abuse, verbal and emotional abuse, and pornography (and by that, I do mean pics of her hubby with other women).

The papers also mention two instances specifically related to Dancing with the Stars. On September 17, her husband objected to a costume designer from DwtS being in their home while the children were present, referring to the designer as a "sodomite."

Her husband claimed the next day that one of their children had broken out in hives from merely looking at the "sodomite."

Also, on October 6, Sara's husband refused to let their children attend the hockey game where Sara sang the National Anthem, as filmed for DwtS.

Sara will make an official announcement on Tuesday's Performance Show. But Tony told People magazine, "This has really taken me by surprise." As recently as October 10, Sara spoke highly of her husband in Us magazine.

ABC has yet to announce how this will affect the show, which is scheduled to end its season on November 15. The natural assumption is that Willa & Max will be brought back to fill the empty slot. But don't count on it. Even if ABC asked her to come back, it doesn't sound like Willa would feel right about accepting.

According to Access Hollywood, Willa expected to be eliminated on Wednesday. That night, when Tom Bergeron asked how she felt about getting cut, she responded, "Relieved." And this morning on Live with Regis and Kelly, after Kelly lead the crowd in a chant of "Bring back Willa and Max," Willa said, "I had a really good time, but when America votes, you go, 'Okay, America voted.'"

Tony will be performing with Elena Grinenko Saturday night at the Chicago Harvest Moon Ball. If I'm able to infiltrate the ball, I'll be sure to ask Tony about everything -- except maybe the gory details of when he took Sara to the doctor for treatment of a stress-induced cyst on her eye, as just reported on the Insider. Yuck.

MOIB will continue to post updates to this story. And we'll add links on this page throughout the weekend. For further reading:

Access Hollywood
People
Sara's husband denies the charges (added 10-14-06)
Craig Schelske's political history (added 10-14-06)