Newsflash to Jaleel White: being on a hit TV show means people are going to care about your personal life! The former child star and current Dancing With the Stars contestant addressed the negative stories about him in the press during a radio interview this morning, and told the host he was surprised by the attention.
"Let me tell you something about this whole show," he said, referring to DWTS. "I had no concept what a tabloid...feeding frenzy this show is. We get to rehearsal and there's like 20 idiots in the back...with cameras and videos," White said. "It sucks because this is our real lives."
White most recently made headlines for an allegedly heated altercation with his dancing partner Kym Johnson, during which he berated her after stepping on her foot. Not quite what it seems, he clarifies.
"We definitely had a disagreement last week," he explained. "But our disagreement was over some of the choreography because she didn't understand who Stefan Urquell was."
Stefan Urquell, as Family Matters fans know, is nerdy neighbor Steve Urkel's cool alter ego. DWTS contestants were asked to create dances this week inspired by their most memorable year, and White chose his transformation from the teen nerd to the confident playboy as his.
In regards to the other rumor that has been dogging him, that he's been physically and emotionally abusive to his baby's mother Bridget Hardy, White once again claims gossip is deceiving.
"I haven't heard from the mother of my child in the last five months," White told Seattle's Star 101.5 FM. "Boom, now all of a sudden I'm getting letters from attorneys and stuff. It's absolutely ridiculous. Like I said, the dancing part has actually become the easy part!"
Among the claims Hardy made in an interview with Star magazine were physical abuse and White's desire to conceal the fact that he's a father. "Even when we had friends over he wanted me to hide all the baby stuff because he didn't want anyone to know we had a child together," she says.
"Someone even invited us to go to Michael Jackson's funeral and he didn't take me because I was seven months pregnant. He still wanted to maintain that playboy image."

"Your natural reaction is to defend yourself and come right out and, you want to point fingers at people, line up people who work with you places and be like, who did it?" he counters.

"You have to take the high road and just focus on the task, and the task is dancing."

Hopefully White's sufficiently cleared the air to do just that.

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