Sources are telling gossip giant TMZ that Marie Osmond's fainting spell live on "Dancing With the Stars" was totally fake. Marie had just finished a high energy Samba routine when she suddenly fell in a heap (but did it lady-like!) on the floor next to host Tom Bergeron and her dance partner Jonathan Roberts while awaiting the score. The sources are saying the whole bit was a publicity stunt.
"You don't plan those things," Osmond, 48, told viewers and co-host Samantha Harris at the time. "Once in a while that happens to me when I get winded, I stop breathing. I'm so sorry. I'm really sorry."
She and her partner then got a very respectable score of 21. What? Marie manipulate the audience for a sympathy vote?
Marie's rep tells TMZ that reports of the fake faint and a writer on set to fed her post-swoon lines are "absolutely false."
"There is no writer on set feeding her lines," the rep says, "Her manager is there and we (her publicists) are there but no one is feeding her lines."
As for a fake faint, her rep says that the charge is "ridiculous. Why would anyone fake fainting on a live TV show? That show happened during the wildfires and Marie has allergies, there was smoke in the air which was extremely toxic. The trailers for the show are outside the stage and she was breathing the air. It's happened before."
