Anna Delvey’s “Dancing With the Stars” partner, Ezra Sosa, was one of the few people not surprised by her reaction to their elimination.
After the pair were cut from the competition Tuesday night, co-host Julianne Hough asked the convicted felon what she would “take away from the competition” — to which the 33-year-old replied, “Nothing.”
Her blunt one-word response quickly went viral on social media; however, Sosa said he “would expect nothing less” from the unapologetic Delvey.
“I knew she was going to say something very iconic and something very Anna Delvey with her exit,” Sosa told “ExtraTV.”
“Of course she has to,” the 23-year-old added. “It’s typical.”
Although the “fake heiress” seemed unemotional in front of cameras, the professional dancer said she was very apologetic behind closed doors.
“She honestly just kept on apologizing to me,” he said. “She felt super sorry that my first season was cut short and I was like, ‘No, don’t apologize. I’m here for you and this was your journey.'”
Although Delvey’s final words left some people with a bad taste, the young dancer insisted that she is an “incredibly sweet” — yet “misunderstood” — person.
“I think the people that treat her as ‘Anna Delvey’ she feels the need to portray that to them,” Sosa said. “But when I was dancing and teaching her I really tried my best to just see her for the person she is outside the persona and she really is so lovely.”
“I really did love getting to know her and getting to dance with her every day.”
Sosa has been one of Delvey’s biggest supporters since her controversial casting was announced earlier this month.
However, he admitted during a recent podcast appearance that the fashionista — whose real name is Anna Sorokin — didn’t “know what she got herself into” by joining the show.
Although Sosa said the fraudster had “pretty good work ethic,” he acknowledged that it “was hard” to get her to care about the competition at first.
“Like every single day she was kind of like, ‘Ugh I don’t want to do it,’ but now she is here and obviously she doesn’t want to make herself look like a fool so she is really putting in the work now,” he told Joe Vulpis.
However, following the season premiere, the professional dancer revealed he found the fashion publicist “crying in the bathroom” due to an influx of hate messages.
“It really did break my heart,” he said in an emotional TikTok urging fans to give her a “second chance.”
Despite his plea, the pair were sent home in the second week, meaning Delvey will have to fly back to her home base of New York City, per her agreement with ICE.
Delvey was convicted in 2019 and served almost four years in prison after being charged with multiple theft-related offenses. She made her return to NYC society in 2024.
