"I have my sights set on Broadway": Elaine Hendrix hints at her next chapter after Dancing with the Stars

Elaine Hendrix says her journey on Dancing with the Stars Season 34 has opened a door she intends to walk through — one not toward another Mirrorball Trophy, but toward the lights of Broadway.

Following her run to the Season 34 final, Hendrix revealed that Broadway is her aim now.

"I have my sights set on Broadway," she said on Good Morning America (GMA), making it clear that her story with live performance is far from finished.

Her announcement came shortly after the Dancing with the Stars finale, where the actress ended her season as one of the last remaining competitors while inspiring fans across generations.

Speaking on GMA after the finale, Hendrix said, 

“I firmly expect to be dancing across the stage again soon.”

It was a statement delivered plainly, not as a tease but as a truth she fully intends to live out — a window into her next chapter.

Elaine Hendrix’s Dancing with the Stars Season 34 journey and its impact

Hendrix entered Dancing with the Stars Season 34 as one of the oldest contestants in the cast, quickly becoming the third woman over 50 to ever reach the finale and the first to do so in more than 10 years.

Paired with pro Alan Bersten, she spent the season delivering performances praised for strength, theatricality, and a level of precision that surprised many viewers who first knew her from The Parent Trap or Anything But Christmas.

Competing alongside Alix Earle and Val Chmerkovskiy, Dylan Efron and Daniella Karagach, Jordan Chiles and Ezra Sosa, and winners Robert Irwin and Witney Carson, Hendrix ultimately fell short of the Mirrorball Trophy. But she didn’t walk away discouraged — she walked away galvanised.

Just before the finale aired, Hendrix reflected on the deeper meaning of her time on Dancing with the Stars, saying the experience felt larger than personal growth alone.

She explained that being on the show meant “representing not just her demographic but everyone,” including younger people who hope to reclaim their own dreams. She added, 

“I started out this competition to reclaim a dream that I lost, and now it’s become so much more.”

Her Season 34 run became a small movement of its own online, with fans praising how she competed with both discipline and joy.

Viewers commented that watching a performer in her fifties hold her own against Olympians, viral stars and younger celebrities made her one of the emotional anchors of the season.

Throughout Season 34, Hendrix danced with the kind of conviction that suggested she was rediscovering a part of herself left dormant — a part now ready to emerge fully.

That is why her line — “I have my sights set on Broadway” — resonates. It is not an announcement of a role, but a declaration of intention. And intention, as Season 34 proved, can become the momentum.

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