At 4:30 on a September morning in 2022, Todd Beasley let himself into Whitney Way Thore’s house, took her dogs out, and started baking a casserole. Whitney filmed it, baffled and delighted, and captioned the video: “This is how he operates of his own volition. I’ve stopped trying to understand.”
That is Todd in a single scene, and he has been doing it since they were 17. As Season 14 premieres Tuesday, November 10 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on TLC, one face is missing from the conversation. Todd Beasley danced Whitney into fame. So where is he now — and does the new era have room for him?
Seventeen, Grease, and a Laptop Camera
Whitney and Todd met as teenagers at Southeast Guilford High School in Greensboro, North Carolina, where they were dance partners in a school production of Grease. Todd studied musical theater at Elon University, graduating in 2007. Whitney became a radio producer, then came home — and reached out to the one person who shared her obsession with dance.
On February 27, 2014, her radio station posted the video that started it all: Whitney and Todd dancing to Jason Derulo’s “Talk Dirty,” shot on a laptop camera and titled “A Fat Girl Dancing.” It passed eight million views and turned a behind-the-scenes producer into a body-positivity icon. The show premiered less than a year later, with Whitney introducing Todd as her “eternal dance partner” in episode one. The two went on to choreograph routines and teach classes together. Todd, a dance instructor, was never just a sidekick.
The Friend Who Says the Thing Nobody Else Will
What makes Todd irreplaceable is not the dancing. It is the bluntness. In a Season 12 scene from 2024, Todd delivered the verdict nobody else would say out loud: men were scared of her because “you’re intimidating… you’re so confident and smart and sexually charged.”
That honesty has cost them fights, but they always came back. That is the point of a friendship that has lasted more than two decades: it survives the argument.
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Here is the wrinkle Season 14 has not addressed. Todd grew up in Greensboro and still calls it home. Whitney, meanwhile, has made her move back to Charlotte, the city where she reconnected with fiancé Jake Beaudoin. Ninety miles is a short drive, but a real shift in the show’s center of gravity.
The Season 14 trailer shows Whitney introducing Jake to her family and friends, who waste no time grilling him about his intentions and kids. As for Todd, no trailer clip released so far has confirmed whether he appears in the new season at all. That silence is exactly why fans keep asking.
Why Season 14 Needs Its Reality Check Back
Every reality show needs one person who cannot be fooled, and for fourteen seasons that person has been Todd. He knew Whitney when she was a teenager in a school musical, not a TLC star with 1.3 million Instagram followers.
TLC says Whitney is “rediscovering her confidence through dance” — and the dance comeback Season 14 promises belongs, in part, to the partner who taught the classes with her. A wedding is a day; a new city is an address. But the dance floor is where this story began, and Todd was standing on it.
On Tuesday night, Whitney walks into her new era. The question hanging over the premiere: does the man who danced her into fame get a seat at the table? Team Bring Todd to Charlotte, or Team Let the New Era Start Fresh?
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