East West - The Asian American Lifestyle Magazine

By Alice Suh, originally published November 2005

She’s gotten down and dirty with the queen of pop, Madonna.  She’s broken a sweat next to Jennifer Lopez as a Fly Girl on “In Living Color.” And she’s even managed to entice Mike Myers as a Japanese schoolgirl in “Austin Powers in Goldmember.” Now, finally, dancer/choreographer/actress Carrie Ann Inaba can give her feet a well-deserved break as she takes on her latest role — celebrity dance judge.

The 37-year-old dancing veteran is gearing up for another season of the surprise hit reality show “Dancing with the Stars,” in which she, along with two other international judges, critique and evaluate the dance performance of a celebrity amateur dancer and their professional dance partner. It’s a welcome change for Inaba, who gets to share and comment on what she’s learned and mastered over the years.

“I love dance and I’m very passionate about dance and I love helping people to get better, so usually my comments are driven towards that,” Inaba says.

Although she’s already been dubbed “the next Simon Cowell,” and sometimes unfairly branded as an evil Asian “Dragon Lady,” Inaba says both comparisons are inaccurate.

“They should give me long fingernails and an opium pipe and I can do the full stereotype,” Inaba says, jokingly. “I don’t think they’re trying to make me out to be anything. I think, maybe because everyone is pre-programmed to think that there’s an  ‘evil’ one, a  ‘normal’ one and then the ‘super nice’ one, that it’s a formula.  They look at us and try to fit us into a formula,” Inaba says.

 Inaba’s “in-your-face” comments may seem harsh or a bit negative at times, but friends who have worked with her say that Inaba just likes to tell it as it is.

“Carrie is a very honest, straightforward person.  I don’t think she’s mean,” film choreographer Marguerite Derricks says.

“She’s a strong woman and she’s not afraid to give her opinions. She’s very honest. You always know how you stand with her.  There’s no underlying game,” former Fly Girl Carla Kama says.

Even so, Inaba’s honesty is often taken the wrong way.

“There are people that come up to me … that say, ‘Oh, you’re the judge from ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ you should be nicer,’ ” Inaba says. “And I go, ‘What did I say that was so mean?’ And they can’t remember … and that’s that. We smile and move on.”

The Hawaiian-born beauty of Chinese, Japanese and Irish descent is used to both praise and criticism, having had her first taste of fame as a pop singer in Japan when she was 18. It was a learning experience for Inaba, who was unhappy as a Japanese “teen idol” and decided to pursue a dance career back in America. She enrolled at the University of California, Irvine as a choreography major and took dance classes in Los Angeles, until she got her second big break, as a Fly Girl on Fox’s “In Living Color.”

“I loved that show … Those were good memories.  I loved working with that cast of people.  It was a fantastic group of people and everybody was from a different background.  It was such a great celebration of life,” Inaba says.

Appearing regularly on television at a time when Asian Americans were still few and far between, Inaba says her greatest joy was being able to represent Asians in the media.

“You get the typical fan mail from men and prison mail, but I got fan mail from Asian families telling me that it was so wonderful to see a different type of role model out there, (saying) thank you so much for giving us the option of entertainment as a career for a child,” Inaba says.

Pursuing a career in entertainment and the arts was never an issue for Inaba, who grew up with supportive parents and lived in a comfortable environment where she believed she could succeed.

“You’re (Asian Americans) a majority, so you don’t have any sort of complex about being inferior or being a minority.  You just don’t have that. I’ve never thought of it as a problem or an issue to contend with in my career … I think that for a lot of people in Hawaii, it’s not an issue for them and we’re raised to be very confident,” Inaba says.

Inaba’s self-assurance helped her develop personally as well as professionally.  She began taking risks and surprised even her parents when she toured with Madonna’s “The Girlie Show World Tour” as a topless, erotic pole dancer.

“I loved that she (Madonna) asked me because it gave me an opportunity to say ‘yes’ and to show people that just because I was doing something that was not the norm or not conservative, acceptable behavior, that I wasn’t a different person.   At the end of the day, I still came home and I was still me,” Inaba says. 

Although Inaba loved what she was doing, she began feeling jaded and wanted to leave the entertainment industry.

“This business brings a lot of ego out of people and I don’t really care for people that are driven by ego … The industry itself just breeds competition even among friends and I don’t really like that,” Inaba says.

Despite her hesitation, Inaba’s dancing skills quickly became in demand and she was asked to choreograph for a slew of reality shows, including Fox’s “Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire” and VH1’s “In Search of the Partridge Family.”

“She’s such an incredible dancer … She’s so multi-talented.  She has such a tremendous respect for what we do in variety television and such an understanding and a passion for how it should be done,” says Jeff Margolis, producer of “In Search of the Partridge Family.”

It wasn’t long before producers from “Dancing with the Stars” asked Inaba to audition and hired her as one of the judges, despite the fact that she had little experience in ballroom dance. 

“I think variety is great … I don’t think you should just have one person specialize in one style.  It’s good to have that diversity.  You don’t want three people to have all ballroom dancing background,” says Barry Lather, dance choreographer/director. 

“It was smart on the producers’ side to hire a judge that is a choreographer, that knows all dance and is not just stuck on the ballroom side,” Derricks says.

It was also a relief for Inaba to be accepted by the other two judges, Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli, who had extensive ballroom experience and were also two of the original judges from the British version of the show called, “Strictly Come Dancing.”

“I love the other two judges.  I think it’s an honor for me to be working with them.  I respect them.  They’ve been doing it a lot longer than me … and they’ve treated me with nothing but respect and didn’t have to.  I’m the new kid and I’m not from the ballroom world so they could have really, really excluded me.  But they didn’t,” Inaba says. 

Apart from being the “new kid,” Inaba is also the only American judge on the show.

“I think it’s quite impressive that they (the producers) allowed the only American judge to be Asian and a woman … They were willing to cast who they thought would be best for the role,” Inaba says.

“She brought something to the show. She has the ability to judge dance. It’s what she does and a lot of times on these shows, you get judges that have no right to be there. They’re only there because of their name … and the fact that she is a very attractive woman adds a little bonus,” Margolis says.   

Although “Dancing with the Stars” has provided Inaba with greater media exposure and more opportunities, she refuses to let herself get caught up in the hype.

“Someone asked me, ‘How does it feel about all the success?’ And, I just know that it doesn’t have anything to do with me as a person.  These are wonderful opportunities and they come and they go … and it’s all temporal,” Inaba says.

Rather than reflecting on her past and present success, Inaba says she’s more interested in crossing off things her life’s to-do list.

“I don’t necessarily have aspirations to become a major actress, that’s not really my goal. I take things as they come.  I look at life more as an adventure … and I do want to do a martial arts film where I get killed off immediately … I don’t have to speak.  I can be like the sidekick who just kind of (saunters) on the side of the frame and … they do this amazing martial arts sequence and then I get killed and that’s the end of it,” Inaba says.

 Or perhaps a martial arts film in which Inaba dances her way to victory might not be a bad idea, either.