Despite what Sharna Burgess and Bonner Bolton may have led you to think on Dancing With the Stars, the partners are not a couple.
As it turns out, E! News can confirm Burgess is dating Pierson Fodé! While Burgess and Bolton's interactions on the dancing competition show give fans the idea that they could be dating in real life, a separate source tells E! News that they "just play it up for the show."
"Sharna and Pierson are together. She just took him to that James Hinchcliffe race they both posted about on Instagram and were acting affectionate like a couple there," the insider says. "She was at Pierson's birthday party last week. He even visited her while she was on the road during the DWTS tour months ago."
It looks like they're heating up!
Meanwhile, Burgess and Bolton previously told E! News that their chemistry is man-made thanks to a bit of magic on the production side. "It's all a part of playing the character, for sure," Bolton admitted, chalking up those sparks flying to good old-fashioned faking. "You've got to practice your acting skills."
"Which we practiced a lot this week," Burgess added. "We talked a lot about breaking down characters and bringing across a tormented romance that was a little bit one-sided. It's all about acting at the same time as dancing. If people feel like maybe we were having a romantic relationship, then we did our job in our dance, right?"
Now that the cat's out of the bag on Burgess and Fodé's relationship, the DWTS partners might want to rethink their tactic.
—Additional reporting by Alli Rosenbloom