Riker Lynch and Allison Holker are among the frontrunners this season on “Dancing with the Stars.”
The fearless pair came out of the gate strong in week 1 and haven’t looked back, improving their ballroom performances as the competition has begun to narrow down to the final teams of Season 20.
Riker has been balancing his time rehearsing with Allison in preparation for Monday “Dancing” competition shows, with prepping a new album with his band, R5. This week Riker will not only tackle two dances with Allison on Monday night – the Viennese waltz and Jazz – but he’ll start pre-production work on R5’s “Sometime Last Night” summer tour, which kicks off, July 7 in Florida.
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During a rare moment of downtime, Riker told Access Hollywood about he’s been getting through week to week on “Dancing,” how he looks at the competition, and gearing up for R5’s new release.
AccessHollywood.co: Let’s just start with me asking you how much pain you’re in right now? This must be really tough on your body.
Riker Lynch: It really, really is. Coming into it, I was like, ‘I’ve had some dance experience. I’ll be fine.’ And then you start doing everything and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh! This is insane!’
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Access: [Last week] the camera panned to your face when Willow Shields got eliminated and you looked as shocked as I think America felt.
Riker: Yeah, I mean, I was extremely shocked. It would have been shocking whoever was going home that week, but like Willow could have been in the finals. So her going home that early, that was what the big shocker was I think, to all of us, and all of us on stage were like, ‘Wait, wait. What happened?’ It was a crazy moment.
Access: You got Len Goodman’s first 10 [of Season 20 last week]. What did that moment feel like for you?
Riker: That was like… one of the coolest moments of the show so far because I was literally thinking about that all week long, I was like, ‘He hasn’t given a single 10. I want to be the first one to get this 10,’ and I worked really, really hard for it and it was just — it was such an awesome moment, and I had so much fun doing the dance that when I finished, I was like, ‘It’ll be awesome if I get [it], but at the same time I was just happy that I’ve had so much fun doing the dance.’ And I felt like I really, really nailed it, so then, when the 10 came up, it was just like an extra level of excitement and it was so, so cool.
Access: It seems like the judges have been enjoying your journey. What does it feel like when you get some of the comments back from them and they are just floored by you guys?
Riker: [I’m] very, very thankful, for sure because we are working really, really hard and everybody’s working really hard and it’s been a long couple [of] weeks now and you’re finally kind of getting in the flow of things and you’re actually kind of feeling like, ‘Wow, I can actually kind of do some of these and be really good at it,’ [whereas] in the beginning, you’re kind of like, I don’t really know what I’m doing and you’re just trying your best. When you get really good comments back, it’s definitely a really good feel-good moment, and then at the same time, they always give like little critiques and I always really try to make sure I listen and apply those the next week and really make sure those are happening because they’re giving critiques because they want to see improvement. So I want to show that I’m hearing the critiques and making [the adjustments] happen.
Access: What have you loved about working with Allison as your teaching partner and partner on the stage?
Riker: She has the most contagious energy ever and she’s always like on 100-crazy percent and her energy level is always 100 so it’s very contagious, so when I’m feeling exhausted, she always has great energy that I can kind of feed off of and that’s an amazing thing because I get exhausted from doing all these crazy dances and then she’s always got tons and tons of energy, so it makes me work harder.
Access: At this point do you even think of anybody else as other competitors or are you just competing with yourselves?
Riker: It’s a little bit of both. It’s a competition against other competitors so you definitely are like, ‘I want to win this thing,’ but at the same I am thinking I just want to do the best I can do for myself and really just try to get higher scores each week and raise the bar for me personally each week. But like you said, it’s a competition. There are other people competing against you, and I’m competitive and I want to win.
Access: You’re doing an R5 tour this summer. Are you doing rehearsals for the tour at this point?
Riker: Not yet, we’ll start rehearsals [this week] for [the tour], but that’s just like kind of pre-production stuff. That’s just sort of us going through the songs. The hardcore tour rehearsals will start in June where we really put the stage together and choreograph the lighting and put the set list together and what not, but that is gonna be so fun. The ‘Sometime Last Night’ tour will definitely be – just the ideas we’ve been talking about – it’s going to be the best tour we’ve ever had so far.
Access: Why do you think it’s going to be the best one? Because [you’re taking] things up a notch?
Riker: Yeah, we’re taking things up a notch. The songs alone are just another level for us, and another extra bit of like of personal experience within the songs that I think people will really connect with. We’ve kind of put this whole theme together and I think when we take it on the road, it’s just going to take it up just another extra level and people are going to be leaving the shows being like, ‘That was one of the best concerts I think I’ve ever been to.’
Access: When did you guys actually have time to record the album [‘Sometime Last Night’]?
Riker: The whole thing was written pretty much like right before I got ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ and right when I got it, we started recording. So the first week I recorded all my bass parts and then Rocky [Lynch] produced a lot of the album, so he was in with our producer working on the songs every single day pretty much and then in between ‘Dancing with the Stars’ rehearsals, I would go and work a little bit. So I’d kind of like do R5 stuff in the morning and then come to dance rehearsals, so I recorded some background vocals and stuff like that, as well as like just constructing the songs, while I was doing ‘Dancing with the Stars.’
Access: When do you sleep?
Riker: I can’t remember the last time I slept (laughs).
Catch Riker and Allison performing Monday on “Dancing with the Stars.” Riker and R5 will release their new album, “Sometime Last Night” on July 10.
— Jolie Lash
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