Alix Earle, the 24-year-old social media influencer set to join Dancing with the Stars on Sept. 16, is again being linked in reports to a long-running family controversy stemming from an extramarital relationship involving her father and a woman who later figured in a separate national scandal.
The Daily Mail and other outlets this week revisited the 2008 affair between Thomas Earle, a New Jersey construction executive, and Ashley Dupre, who became a central figure in the resignation of then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. The reporting draws on interviews with former classmates and public remarks Earle has made about how the episode affected her childhood and public life as she transitions from college TikTok creator to mainstream television participant.
Earle rose to prominence in recent years after posting 'get ready with me' and lifestyle videos while she was a University of Miami student. Her following across Instagram and TikTok is estimated at about 12 million. Her growing public profile has included fashion-week appearances, travel content and links to professional sport through her relationship with Houston Texans wide receiver Braxton Berrios.
According to reporting that revisits the events of 2008, Thomas Earle’s relationship with Dupre became public the same year federal investigators were probing an escort service that counted Eliot Spitzer among its clients. Court records and contemporary reporting show that Spitzer checked into a Washington, D.C., hotel in February 2008 under a false name, and that investigators traced substantial payments from his accounts to the agency implicated in the probe. Spitzer later resigned after the matter became public. Dupre, then an aspiring musician, was not charged in the federal investigation.
The Earle family’s domestic fallout reached Alix Earle during her elementary school years. Earle has described in interviews and podcasts how paparazzi and local attention disrupted her family life and schooling. On the "Call Her Daddy" podcast in 2023 she recalled being removed from her home by family members and not understanding the media presence at the time. She has said she was in second grade when the original reporting occurred and that she only fully grasped the nature of the coverage a couple of years later when she began searching online.
Former classmates who spoke to the Daily Mail described the affair and Dupre’s notoriety as the subject of conversation in a small New Jersey community. Earle told listeners on her Hot Mess podcast in 2024 that she and her younger sister once tormented Dupre when the two girls were told to be polite to her; Earle said they filled Dupre’s shoes with toothpaste and offered her a disguised garlic clove. Earle has also recounted feeling humiliated in school when a teacher discussed the governor’s scandal in class, saying classmates laughed and she left school in tears.
Those childhood episodes have not, by Earle’s account and by some observers’ accounts, defined her public trajectory. Earle has described a later, pragmatic relationship with Dupre after the latter married Thomas Earle in 2013 and became part of the blended family. In a 2023 interview with Elle, Earle said she has leaned on Dupre’s experience as someone who has navigated intense media scrutiny, quoting her stepmother as advising that "life goes on." Public relations consultant Kelly Cutrone, who encountered Dupre professionally, told the Daily Mail that Dupre understood how to cope with fame and could offer guidance.
Earle’s upcoming appearance on Dancing with the Stars arrives as she continues to expand beyond social media content into mainstream entertainment. The show’s fall season will feature her in the celebrity ensemble with professional partner Val Chmerkovskiy. Representatives for Earle and Dupre were contacted for comment by the reporting outlet.
The broader story of the 2008 scandals remains part of the public record and has periodically resurfaced as participants in those events—public officials, media figures and the families involved—have moved into new public roles. Earle’s increased visibility as an influencer and television contestant has prompted renewed attention to how private family events intersect with public careers in the age of social media.