Selma Blair Says She Fainted Before Rehearsal For ‘DWTS’: ‘I Pass Out A Lot’
Selma and her pro dance partner explained in a new interview how her MS diagnosis affects their rehearsals together.
Selma Blair isn’t letting a little fainting spell get in the way of a good performance! According to her Dancing With The Stars partner Sasha Farber, the Legally Blonde actress, 50, once texted him from the airport to say she’d just passed out — but was still coming to rehearsal. “I’m like, ‘Take the day off, just chill,'” Sasha told Entertainment Tonight during an interview over the weekend. “She’s like, ‘Nope!'” They then spent a full five hours working together, after only planning for two. “The thing is, I pass out a lot,” Blair says. “It’s part of the reason I have Scout [her service dog] and it doesn’t mean I lose consciousness [or] it’s a whole ambulance experience, it’s something that I lose my vision, gravity pulls me down and I’m very disoriented and gone for a spell. He’s kind of there to also catch me, you know, make the ground a little closer with his back.”
Selma’s candid admission comes as she continues to face multiple sclerosis while appearing on the popular ABC show. And clearly, she’s taking it all the way. Selma explained that sometimes she closes her eyes to complete daily tasks — and Sasha added that they’ve since incorporated that into rehearsals as a way to “enhance” the experience. “When she wants to feel comfortable, she closes her eyes,” he noted. “So, I figured let’s give this a go. Let’s blindfold her for the whole dance and see. Take away her vision so we would enhance the feel of the message from the brain.”
“I do find that I shut my eyes and it makes me center a lot more. So I can kinda calm down,” she told the outlet. “I was doing it before in life, just the way I would approach things would really raise my nervous system. I can get really quickly kinda frantic because I get overwhelmed, or maybe that’s just my personality or sort of attention span with some things.”
Aside from raising her already high profile, the beautiful mom of one says she’s grateful for other unexpected benefits of joining the 31st season of ‘DWTS.’ “It’s been so heartening to see what I think this can do for a lot of people that move or present differently and think they can’t do things,” the Cruel Intentions star said. “It’s such a blessing to be able to learn some fluidity with dance. It really does help me learn to breathe. That’s something I’ve never done well, even before MS, just being a Midwest girl and not ever really approaching breath.”