Xochitl Gomez Dishes On How Val Chmervoskiy's Experience Working With Other Young Celebs Has Been Helpful on 'DWTS' (Exclusive)

Xochitl Gomez is gushing over her Dancing With the Stars pro partner Val Chmerkovskiy!

In fact, the 17-year-old Marvel star was actually really hoping to have him as her dance partner, and she lucked out by being paired with him.

JJJ spoke with Xochitl ahead of week two, which “Latin Night,” and found out how Val‘s past DWTS partners, like Laurie Hernandez and Zendaya, who were both 16 when they competed, has really helped.

See what she said inside…

“I went into it literally like, ‘Please Val, please. I need Val.’ Purely because of his great work that he’s done with Laurie and Zendaya,” Xochitl shared with us. “I’m just so lucky to have been paired with someone who’s had the challenge of, you know, making a dance not so intimate, but making it more about how beautiful the choreography can be and making sure that things can be more on the technical side, just because sometimes things can get more on the romantic side.”

“And I’m like, what’s so beautiful about dance is that it doesn’t even have to be about that at all. It can be really about how beautiful the choreography can be. And hopefully for as long as we can go in this competition, we get to showcase that,” she added.

Be sure to tune in to Dancing With the Stars TONIGHT (October 3) to watch Xochitl and Val perform the salsa to “Don’t Go Yet” by Camila Cabello. The episode starts at 8pm ET/PT on ABC and Disney+!

Check out more about Xochitl‘s experience so far on DWTS, and find out what she teased about this week’s dance over on