Drew Lachey Visits ‘The Tonight Show’

98 Degrees star Drew Lachey was on ‘The Tonight Show with Jay Leno’ on Monday night to discuss his win on ‘Dancing With The Stars’ over Jerry Rice on Sunday night. Lachey was armed with his “ugly” trophy and talked about his participation in the program, but wasn’t asked his tabloid target brother Nick, nor if he planned on releasing solo material to take advantage of his new name recognition. Read on for a rough transcript.

Jay: All right, please welcome Drew Lachey!

[ Cheers and applause ]

Drew: It’s just as ugly in person.

Jay: What a cheap-ass trophy.

Drew: I know, it’s terrible.

[ Laughter ]

Jay: This is what you won?

Drew: It sucks. It sucks so bad that it’s great.

[ Laughter ]

Jay: Well, congratulations.

Drew: Thank you very much.

Jay: You know something? I got to give you a lot of credit. You know, to go out there and do that — I mean I would — I don’t know how do you that. How did you celebrate? How did you celebrate when you won?

Drew: Went out. You know, there was a rap party, and went out and tried to unwind a bit. I’m sure there was a lot of dancing going on. I was doing none of it.

[ Laughter ] You know, my feet are still swollen, so I’m just trying to take it easy and try and cat up.

Jay: Now, Stacy Keibler? That’s her name. She was sort of the favorite.

Drew: Yeah, the Vegas bookies said that she was the favorite to win.

Jay: They were betting on this in Vegas?

Drew: Bet on everything. Absolutely. Now, they said that she was going to win before the competition even started. And then, I think as it progressed and things went along, the odds changed a a little bit.

Jay: So, how did you feel when she got booted off?

Drew: Good.

Jay: Yeah.[ Laughter ] I like that. That’s a very honest answer. Good for you.

Drew: I think, for my own selfish reasons, I felt good because I felt like that was my biggest competition dance-wise. But, you know, Jerry is the fan favorite. And he has been. He’s a great man, a gentleman. It was fun.

Jay: Now, it’s aive show, which seems even scarier to me. I mean, was it really frightening that it was live, live? Not live on tape. It was live, live.

Drew: Yeah, we have like an 8-second delay. So, basically, if somebody’s top popped open or somebody made a bad reference to something, they had the magic button that they could, you know, block everything out. But for the most part, it was live to the east coast. The west coast had a three-hour delay, obviously. But it was 20 million people. It wasn’t 400, 500 in the studio. It was 20 million people.

Jay: Now, I got 27 million.

[ Laughter ]

Drew: Thank you for pointing that out to me. I appreciate it. Now, it was nerve racking, but it was fun.

Jay: ‘Cause the judges scored the other couple. You got 27 out of 30, right?

Drew: Yesterday, yeah.

Jay: And they got 30 out of 30. So, did you feel discouraged there?

Drew: No, because the night before, Thursday night, I got 30 out of 30 and 30 out of 30. And then 27 out of 30. And she got 30 out of 30, 26 out of 30.

Jay: Oh, you’re into this.

Drew: It’s been my life.

[ Laughter ] I’m the biggest “dancing with the stars” dork in the world right now.

Jay: ‘Cause I know you, you’re like a guy-guy.

Drew: Absolutely.

Jay: How do you get selected for this? Do they come to you and you go, “what?” How did they convince you? Did you all want to do this? How does this happen?

Drew: Yes, I always wanted to put on rhinestones and go ballroom dancing.

[ Laughter ] That was a secret passion of mine.

Jay: You don’t know how many guys in this town that is their secret passion.

[ Laughter ]

Drew: I know. Trust me, I do know now.It’s been this thing that’s been building over time. And they called my manager and said, “hey, we’re interested in Drew.” I had just come back from doing “Rent,” so I guess they thought I had —

Jay: Okay. So, you had previous dance experience?

Drew: Yeah. Anybody that’s seen a 98 degrees show knows I have no dance experience.

Jay: Well, how about, like, your guy buddies? You tell them you’re doin3 “Dancing with the Stars. Are they like, “oh, come on”? All the time?

Drew: Absolutely. My grandmother’s husband called me up and said, “Nice job, twinkle toes.”

[ Laughter ] It’s like — it’s crazy. Everybody calls up and busts my chops, but you know what? Say, “great job.”

Jay: You know, I know how hard that is. I was exhausted watching. I mean, so, to me — so, how hard did you learn — how many hours a day? When did you start doing this to get ready?

Drew: We started rehearsals right around thanksgiving. That was kind of our first — my great break into “dancing with the stars” and ballroom dancing. Then, January 5th is when we started the show. And for that month, we kind of learned a couple dances. And then it was four hours a a week.

Jay: All right, so you’re

Drew: Yep.

Jay: I mean, at some point, do you go, “this sucks. I’m going to look ridiculous. Did you ever do that? You say, “I want out of this.”

Drew: I did that every day.

Drew: Ja really?

Drew: Every day, I was like, “this sucks! Why am but then — kind of cooler heads prevailed. Every time you go out there and you perform in front of that audience, you’re reminded why you signed up to do the show. Perform in the first place.

Jay: “This baby.”

[ Laughter ]

Jay: And I was stunned. I assumed you got that and, like, a million dollars. There’s nothing.

Drew: I wish.

Jay: You didn’t even get a a sandwich, do you?

Drew: No, no. A couple crackers aof1 o that was it, you know. It’s really — I think that’s part of the appeal of the show, is that you don’t win anything really. I mean, it’s all for bragging rights.

Jay: That’s the appeal for me. So, what was the hardest dance to learn? Was there one you just couldn’t get?

Drew: We did one — think it was, like, week five or six, the samba. “Dirty.” It’s a great song, but, you know, there’s this whole action thing. And for anybody watching the problem has been my shoulders and hip action. Remember, Kev?

[ Cheers ] Kev went with shoulders. I went with hip action.

Drew: My shoulders were up and my hip action was a little shaky. But other than that, they were all fun. You know, the “thriller” dance — that was fun. And “the freestyle,” you know, the cowboy one, the “Brokeback Mountain” dance that everybody likes to call it.

Jay: Did you get injured at all?

Drew: Yeah, I pulled my hamstring. I pulled a muscle in my back. I got a busted nose.

Jay: How did you bust your nose?

Drew: I got an elbow. She elbowed me in the face.

[ Laughter women. She was doing a spin and, literally, she just took out — I mean, you can’t miss it. It’s there.

Jay: Yeah.

Drew: So if she — yeah. It was good.

Jay: Nick wanted to come here last week and salute you. But that would be rigging the votes.

Drew: Yeah. I think — would have had a

Jay: He was really in this.

Drew: He’s been huge supporter since week one. And I think people are surprised how close we are. But we’ve always been like that, just now it’s kind of in people’s consciousness.

Jay: Okay, now, people could kind of get online and vote, right?

Drew: Yeah. Now, were you recruiting people? Were you handing out flyers — “hey, vote for me”? I couldn’t officially do it, so I got my wife to do it.

Jay: Oh, she did it? And how would she do it?

Drew: Oh, my entire e-mail list got an e-mail every Wednesday night. It had to be the same time Wednesday night ’cause she’s superstitious. So the entire e-mail list would on, maybe a picture from the week before.

Jay: Okay.

Drew: You know, just trying to encourage people. My cousin put up something on MySpace. You know, everybody — it’s called the drew crew, by the way. So, they were representing.

Jay: So, what happens now? You can’t top this. Do you go into retirement.

Drew: Yeah.

Jay: Fade into oblivion? What happens?

Drew: I go buy a pick-up truck and I go buy a farm. You know, go live on a farm.

Jay: Buddy. Good job. Good job. Thank you very much Drew Lachey