Alyson Hannigan Reveals What Her Family Did For Her After ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Week 1, Talks How She Learns the Dances & More (Exclusive)

Alyson Hannigan is having a lot of fun on Dancing With the Stars!

The 49-year-old actress has made it past the first two weeks of the reality competition, dancing alongside her pro partner Sasha Farber.

In week one, Alyson and Sasha landed towards the bottom of the leaderboard with their salsa, but made a “night and day” comeback, as judge Derek Hough said, in week two with their tango!

We caught up with Alyson ahead of the upcoming “Motown Night,” where she’s doing the Foxtrot to “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. We got the scoop on how her family has been supporting her on the show, why she decided to join DWTS, overcoming the challenges of not being a dancer and more.

Keep reading to see our exclusive interview…

Just Jared: Congratulations on making it to another week on Dancing with the Stars!
Alyson Hannigan: Thank you. I’m very, very happy and relieved.

JJ: You said at the start of the season that you’re not a dancer at all. What made you want to take on a challenge like this?
AH: That is a good question. You know, it was basically, my daughters are 14 and 11, and you know, as parents, we definitely encourage them to try things that are out of their comfort zone. Like go out for the volleyball team, go out for the swim team. You know, challenge yourself, just because you don’t know if you’re good at it or not, that shouldn’t hold you back. And I sort of realized, well, now they’re old enough to know that I’m a hypocrite if I won’t do that myself, but I’m preaching to them that they have to do it. So I was like, okay, you know what? I’m going to do it. I’m doing it mainly because it terrifies me, and it has just been the best thing that I said yes to, honestly. It’s just been so rewarding in so many ways that I wasn’t even aware of and it’s just, I love it so much and I don’t want it to end.

I was in the first few weeks of rehearsal and I had this great sense of like, oh, whenever this is over, I am going to be so sad. You know, and so I just hope it lasts for, you know, I’ve said I don’t have a destination, but I’m really enjoying this journey, and I don’t want it to end, you know. And the highs, and the lows, and the blood, and the sweat, and the tears, and all of the above, I love every second of it.

JJ: What does your family think of you doing the show?
AH: They’re so supportive. It’s really, it’s just been such a wonderful gift to all of us. They’re just so great. They try to help me with frame and all the things. It mainly turns into us just being silly and my husband [Alexis Denisof] acting like he threw his back out, but it’s just been great. They’ve decorated the house with disco balls and all the stuff after my first day and dance, with congratulations, they’re just so supportive. It’s really lovely. My daughter wants to miss a volleyball game so she can go to the taping. It’s so sweet.

JJ: Since you were towards the bottom on week one, how did you overcome that obstacle and return with a “night and day” comeback for this week?
AH: I think what I really did was learn a better way for me to learn. Actually, it was the day after the first show and my husband woke up early, which he doesn’t like to do. I always wake up before the kids so I can have my coffee and just before the kids wake up and start the lunches and all the stuff. So he came down and we just had this awesome conversation, sort of dissecting things. What he made me realize was I need to translate dancer language into actors language so that I can learn faster and learn better. That opened this door for me and I realized I basically have to write everything down, which I had heard Charli D’Amelio say that she did. I was like, that’s such a good idea. So I basically wrote every single step and count and all the notes that I catch for getting in the dance of like, don’t hop here. This is a small step, shoulders down, everything. It was just ridiculous. But that became my script and then I just memorized the script so that if I lost track of the counting in the dance, it didn’t matter because I knew the dance. So that I think was like a game changer for me and now I’m going to do that this week. And also just, I watched tons of videos so that, you know, there’s only so much explaining Sasha can try to do. Sometimes I just have to see what what he’s talking about. And just the combination of those two things were kind of major for me, and now I kind of have a plan. Before I think the first week, I was just like, I just hope I can figure this all out, and I was just kind of flying by the seat of my pants and I forgot steps and you know, I just, and the adrenaline and all the stuff. And so I just realized, okay, I just have to be a lot more prepared. And I have to do a lot more homework than most people do. Because I’m starting in a major deficit, so I have to I have to like just work really hard. That’s the only thing I can control. Like, you know, it doesn’t come naturally to me, so all I can do is just work really hard.

JJ: How does Sasha help encourage you to keep going when you’re feeling down about not getting certain steps down or, just getting through the learning process?
AH: Yeah, I mean he’s so good. He’s so good about trying to, you know build my confidence. Like yesterday, I was back down to, you know, zero again. I’m just frustrated and because you know, it’s just making silly mistakes again and again, but, you know, he just, I don’t know. He just has such a way of never making me feel like he wants to quit, which I’m sure he probably does. But, you know, to have him as a partner is so rewarding because because he’s got so much energy, and he’s never giving up on me, so I won’t give up on me, and it’s just, it’s been wonderful. Even when he steps on my feet, which he’s been doing, but apparently that’s my fault.

JJ: Between the first and second weeks, you seem to have gotten more confident with yourself on the dance floor. What has been your biggest motivator working week to week? Has it been the scoring, the judges remarks?
AH: Yeah, well, I definitely just, I took their advice, and I really had that in my head, and then you know, just really wanted to show that I’m working hard. I enjoy this so much and I just want to keep going for as long as I can, and yeah, I guess because it doesn’t come naturally, I’m just gonna do extra homework and try to get there or get wherever I can go, you know. I’m not competing with other people, I’m competing with myself to just be better each week.

JJ: What has been your biggest challenge about your Foxtrot for this week’s Motown Night?
AH: I think the biggest challenge so far has just been some of the footwork. I mean, today was a good day. I think that I’m sort of learning what the process is looking like, because now this is the third week. So I’m like, oh, okay, I see the similarities of how it develops, you know, where at first, you’re just like, oh my gosh, I just don’t know what you’re talking about, how am I going to learn this? But then by like today, we could run the whole dance through and yes, I made a ton of mistakes, but instead of like the first week when I would make those mistakes and I would just be like, oh no, I’m never going to get this. At least now I know, like, “oh no, I’ve been here before and I can get this.” So that’s sort of like a nice freedom of like, don’t stress out that you’re still making the same mistakes over and over because you can get there. So to run the dance the whole time, like all the way through from the beginning to the end is so like, it’s such a relief in a way because then it’s like, okay, I know the dance now it’s working on all the details of the dance. To make sure my steps are smaller here and make sure, you know, my shoulders are here and just all of the fine tuning because when we’re in the, there’s sort of like a big map of like, okay, this is your whole dance, but then we have to dissect each section of like, okay, so we’ll just work on this piece over and over and over. So, I always call it like the dissection and when we’re in the dissection, I’m just like, oh, it’s so it’s just so frustrating for me because I’m, you know. But when we get to the like, okay, well, we have the whole map and we can do it and then start fine tuning, that’s my happy place because I feel like that’s progress and we’re getting closer to like, it being good.

JJ: How do you prepare before going on stage for the live show?
AH: That’s a good question. I do a little bit of stretching. I really, I write everything down or at least I did the second week and I’m going to do it today. But I write out everything, including all the notes of the like, the little things that I keep doing over and over. And, and I write that all down and then I just reread it. So it’s just, there’s my script. And now I’ve reread the script and it’s memorized. And I also visualize when I’m writing that down, like, I made a map of the ballroom and I’m like, the judges are here, the cameras here, the […] is here, and the audience is here and the stairs are here. And so then I do, it’s like a scavenger hunt map where I like dot dot dot. Last week it was like kickball change, x, kickball change, pivot, like all the things on the map. And so just even rereading it once really, really locks it in for me. Great.

And then if I could just figure out how to get every single person to loan me their phone at like five o’clock so I could text my name to the number, then I’d be golden. If I could figure out that, I probably wouldn’t have to work so hard at my homework for my dance. But that’s probably not as rewarding.

Be sure to tune to watch Alyson Hannigan compete on week three, Motown Night, of Dancing With the Stars, with Sasha Farber. The show airs at 8pm ET/PT on ABC and Disney+!

To vote for them, you can text “Alyson” to 21523 up to ten times, AND, you can head to DWTSvote.abc.com to cast your votes that way. Voting is only open during the east coast airing of the show, starting at 8pm ET and is open until the last commercial break!