‘Dancing With The Stars’ Cast On Why They’re Ready To Compete

The Season 20 cast of “Dancing with the Stars” has their eyes on the prize!

Five-time mirror ball champ Derek Hough and his newest partner, Olympic gold medal gymnast Nastia Liukin are ready to take on the challenge.

“Being a part of Season 20 — the 10th anniversary — is amazing. It’s going to be great,” Derek said in a new interview from ABC.

PHOTOS: ‘Dancing With The Stars’ Season 20: Cast Portraits

“And it’s a golden mirrorball. I kind of do like gold… I mean, you have five silver ones, like, you need a gold one,” Nastia added.

The New York-based duo isn’t going to allow distance keep them away from the ballroom. (Derek is performing in the “New York Spring Spectacular” at Radio City Music Hall with the Rockettes and Nastia is a student at NYU.)

WATCH: ‘DWTS’: Redfoo Shows Off His Signature Move

“I’m really excited to get the opportunity to dance with Derek and just to have this experience also of doing the back and forth and I’m always up for a good challenge. … That’s how my career has always been, whether it was trying to make the 2008 Olympic team or, you know, finishing my career and moving to New York and starting school at NYU or now getting this opportunity to be on ‘Dancing With the Stars’ that films in LA once a week and then fly back on the red-eye to go to school,” Nastia said. “I think it’s going to be such an amazing opportunity.”

It’ll also be a balancing act for football player Michael Sam, who will be training for the NFL Scouting Combine while learning to dance from pro partner Peta Murgatroyd.

“I’m doing two types of training: ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ which takes a lot of your time and puts a lot of [wear] on your body, and I’m also training for the combine next month, so I am a very focused guy and I’m a very determined guy,” he said, in the ABC footage. “I know what I want and I try to work as hard as I can to get what I want.”

Patti LaBelle and Suzanne Somers said they are going out on the dance floor to prove to America they are still in their prime.

PHOTOS: ‘Dancing’s’ Mirrorball Winners: They Came, They Danced, They Conquered!

“I know that people say after 50, you know, you go downhill and you just… lose excitement and wanting to learn and wanting to do different things. At 70, I’m just beginning,” Patti, who is partnered with Artem Chigvintsev, said.

Tony Dovolani said he isn’t going to let age stand in the way of winning the mirrorball with his partner, 68-year-old former “Three’s Company” star Suzanne.

“I want to win badly because I won Season 15, which was the all-star season. It had six previous champions in it and a whole bunch of finalists and it was a dream come true season. And I just feel like it’s [the] 20th season and we’ve never really had a women, and I say ‘of age’ — Suzanne’s 68 and I want her to hold that trophy at the end and represent those women,” he said. “Age is just a number.”

On the opposite end of the age spectrum is 14-year-old “The Hunger Games” star Willow Shields, who is the youngest contestant to ever compete on “DWTS.” Mark Ballas’ partner may be young, but she’s confident her acting background has prepared her to express a wide range of emotions in their dance routines.

“I worked for four years on ‘The Hunger Games’ films and I think it’s great because on ‘The Hunger Games’ films, at least at the beginning, my character was so far in an emotional place and so I learned really quickly as a 10-year-old to kind of go into this deeply emotional place to play the character and as the series went on, I learned different things and how to find these emotions and things like that and I actually think that I can bring that to this, just in different ways,” she explained. “Obviously, you’re overly happy or you’re sad. It depends on the dance, but I think that having that experience of really being pushed at a young age on ‘The Hunger Games’ films to go really far in one direction and really far in another direction, I think that’ll help me as far as the acting aspect of the dances.”

Season 20 of “Dancing with the Stars” premieres Monday, March 16 at 8/7c on ABC.

— Paige Feigenbaum