Bindi’s Sick Week: Why She Missed DWTS
Bindi Irwin, 27, the famous Aussie wildlife‑aficionado, just slipped into our feeds with a candid confession: she and her little clan were out of the “Dancing with the Stars” taping for the second time in a row, because, you guessed it, they all caught a bug and she lost her voice. Yeah, you read that right: a bug, a throat, a silent living‑room cheer.
She posted an adorable selfie of herself, her husband Chandler, and their four‑year‑old daughter Grace (who is as fierce as a lion cub in the wild). The caption read, in a mixture of casual tone and formal apology, “Chandler, Grace and I all got a bug and I’ve completely lost my voice now… so we will be cheering (quietly) from our living room for Robert and Witney.” The irony? Robert was performing a killer Argentine Tango to The Hampton String Quartet’s “Sweet Dreams Are Made of.”
It’s not the first time Bindi’s family went MIA from DWTS. Think back to last season—Robert was on his way to a heat‑stroke that had everyone shouting, “We want the whole show in one place!” The house was full of people, but the Irwins were like, “Sorry guys, we’re stuck at home.”
I remember the last time my brother and I got a cold and had to stay home from a big college dance event. We both cried for a second, because we’d spent weeks rehearsing, but the memory is stuck just the way they’re stuck in the post‑taping line.
Bindi’s Instagram post was almost like a performance in its own right. It was short, sharp, but it had that human quirk that you’d only see in a real‑life situation. The “(quietly)” in the caption was almost like a winking emoji.
Meanwhile, Robert’s Argentine Tango had his fans going wild on Twitter. #DWTS “Robert’s insane lifts.” The crowd on Instagram was flooded with selfies of people cheering from their sofas, mugs of tea, and a viral GIF of a cat asleep on a piano.
And here’s a fun fact—Bindi’s mother, Terri Irwin, celebrated her 79th birthday this past December while in her studio preparing for a new documentary about rainforest conservation. The family has been busy with the planet, but right now, the planet’s a bit sick—like, literally sick.
Bindi writes that they’re “cheering (quietly)” from the living room. The imagery is strong: the light from their phone screen, the hum of the refrigerator, the smell of cough syrup in the air. It’s almost as if you could taste the cold tea that she’d probably be sipping.
Even as soon as the show aired, people started a new meme: #CheeringInQuiet. The meme had a picture of someone holding a tissue over their mouth, captioned, “When your family’s too sick to cheer loud but you’re still proud.”
The post also asked her followers to vote for Robert. She’s 21, a fresh face on the show. She just launched a new climate initiative last month that aims to protect wetlands in the Kimberley region. You’d never know that a family with a living‑room, sick mother would also be working on conservation.
But back to Bindi, she’s always been the one who says, “Everything has to happen because it has to happen.” Her words sound like someone who has seen a sunrise after a storm, you know? The whole thing kind of feels like a piece of poetry—an odd mixture of a viral trend and heartfelt sincerity.
I can picture Bindi in her living room: the family sitting on the sofa, the window open, the sun outside but the room lit by the glow of a phone. The cat is on the sofa, the little girl is clapping quietly. She says no more words but her body is singing in her own way.
In an world where everyone posts, everyone likes, it might feel weird to see a star stuck at home, but it also makes us think about how we all have our own “living‑room cheering” moments.
So yes, Bindi was at home—lost her voice, but her heart was loud. And that’s enough to make the internet feel like it’s still dancing, even when no one can hear the beat.
