The latest celebrity to be kicked off of "Dancing With the Stars" has a lot to say about his lackluster performance.

On Tuesday, Tavis Smiley was voted off the show after getting the second lowest score (Michael Waltrip and partner Emma Slater received a 24 out fo 40), a 28 out of 40, in the previous episode, People reports

In an interview with "Good Morning America," Smiley said he did not have enough time to rehearse.

"Our competitors on this show had 35-40 hours to rehearse, and I had a book tour," he said, according to theGrio. "The most we could do were eight or 10 hours a week. You cannot perfect the cha cha in eight or 10 hours. I don't care who you are, you can't do that."

Smiley has been promoting his newest book, "Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Final Year," according to People. The talk show host said he warned producers about his obligations before signing up for the ABC dancing competition show.

"Producers shouldn't sign up people who can't commit the time when they are told up front that the person is going to be on a book tour," he told the magazine. "We gave them the entire book-tour schedule in advance. This is not about sour grapes. It's about saying I think the fans deserve to have stars on this show who have the time to commit to learning the dances so [partner Sharna Burgess] and other professionals don't waste their time trying to do something that's just humanly impossible."

According to Smiley, he asked to do the show in the spring of 2015 instead of this fall. His schedule was indeed packed; Burgess had to visit him in five different cities in order to practice for Monday's dance.

"At that point, you have to steal five minutes wherever you can ... elevators, hallways, waiting backstage before he does his lectures," she said. "It was a very intense process. I definitely had anxiety the whole week, but we made it work the best we can. At the same time, I'm incredibly proud of what we were able to do in 10 hours."

Smiley thinks that if he had just a couple more weeks, he would have been able to "really drill down."

"The clock ran out on us," he said. "It's like a football game. Sometimes you are making a comeback, and the clock just runs out. I did the best I could with the time we had. No regrets."

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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.

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