America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders viewers were fixated on Victoria Kalina’s birthday party for two on the Netflix show, but now the former DCC claims she invited her squad to join.
“We had an appearance that morning and that’s when [Netflix] had asked, ‘Hey, can we come film? Can we come celebrate with you?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah,’” Victoria, 24, recalled during the Monday, July 8, episode of the“Be There in Five” podcast. “I word-of-mouth and vocalized, ‘Hey, Netflix is coming. There’s gonna be cake [and] the more the merrier.’ But, I guess it just didn’t trickle along.”
In the America’s Sweethearts episode, Victoria and mom Tina Kalina had an elaborately decorated birthday get-together at their Dallas home where Tina filmed TikToks for her daughter. Victoria’s fellow DCCs did not join them.
“No, because everything that I said, always … got brushed aside. I felt like it went, ‘Whoosh’ [over their heads],” Victoria claimed, noting that most celebratory occasions are planned by “another girl on the team, and they’ll [then] be like, ‘Hey, we’re going to do this and this.’”
Just as the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders reality show is putting the spotlight on the 2023 season, the organization is in the height of the tryouts for the 2024 squad. Netflix dropped a seven-episode docuseries about the women behind DCC in June, following veteran cheerleaders and rookies trying to impress director Kelli Finglass, head choreographer Judy […]
Victoria’s fellow cheerleaders denied the claims that they purposefully decided not to attend the party.
“Would have loved to have been there to celebrate Victoria had I been given the opportunity,” cheerleader Jessica Bowman wrote via TikTok comment on a clip of the podcast episode. “Praying she comes to realize how much the team really did support her.”
Her former DCC teammates McKenzie Sherman, Kelcey Wetterberg, Darian Lassiter and Yevgeniya “Zhenya” Kolpakova all concurred with Jessica in their own TikTok messages.
“I would have been there as well! One of my favorite things about DCC is that we know how to show up for each other,” McKenzie wrote. “For Victoria, it’s no different, we would have absolutely rallied around her.”
According to Kelcey, 27, the DCC girls did celebrate Victoria’s big day.
“We take bdays very seriously around here & would have been there if we had known,” Kelcey commented. “We decorated her locker per DCC tradition, but we wish we could have been given the opportunity to be at her party.”
Sarah Shahi, Teri Hatcher and Phyllis Smith are among the few celebrities who were professional cheerleaders before making it big in Hollywood. Shahi made the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders roster in the late 1990s. “It was very competitive I will say that, it was a great learning experience at the same time,” she told Fox411 in […]
Victoria, who retired in the America’s Sweethearts finale after her fourth year on the squad, has not publicly responded to her former teammates’ responses but long felt left out among DCC dancers.
“I think seeing how isolated I was [shocked me while watching the show] because I knew that I felt that way,” she added on Monday. “Seeing how just, like, apparent that was and it wasn’t in my head made me feel not crazy.”
According to cheerleader Darian, the DCC ladies are the “sweetest people” who would never intentionally exclude one of their own.
“If invited, myself and others would have shown up,” Darian wrote. “My teammates are the sweetest people and want to make every single girl feel loved, especially on their birthday.”
Victoria, meanwhile, has moved to NYC to pursue a career as a Radio City Rockette and is only still “in touch” with fellow alums Katherine “Kat” Puryear and Caroline Sundvold.
America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders is currently streaming on Netflix.
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