FOX Hits the Ice in 'Skating With Celebrities'

Lace up and get ready for some hard lessons as FOX goes to the ice with a new reality series.

"Skating With Celebrities," which debuts Wednesday at 9 p.m. EST, pairs six celebrities with professional figure skaters and asks them to compete in themed episodes.

"First day, I couldn't skate," contestant Todd Bridges , of "Diff'rent Strokes" fame, told FOX News.

"Early on in my life I wanted to be a professional ice skater, but the spandex didn't fit right. And as a child when you have that really tight spandex on it takes away from you having kids," Bridges joked.

Contestant Deborah Gibson , the former teen pop star, also didn't really know what she was getting into.

"I just thought 'Oh, it's a variety show,' that's how I viewed it until I got to L.A. and I saw what everyone was doing and I was like 'Oh my God, I wanna learn how to do that," she said.

And it wasn't like the show had high standards.

"They auditioned celebrities that wanted to do this show and all of celebrities like hit the ice and hit the ice, like hit the ice and fell down. So, they at least needed to know that you could, like, skate forward and figure out some way to turn backward. That was pretty much the qualifications," Gibson said.

Bridges also got in a bit over his head.

"I thought that this would be easy. I can come out and skate around and I thought that we're gonna all be at the same level, but my level just happens to be lower than everyone else's."

That said, he's feeling confident.

"Yeah, we're gonna kick some butt this next couple of weeks, we're gonna do some damage to some people and we're gonna make them look at us and be afraid of us," he said.

Other contestants take the show a little less seriously.

"Sometimes I think I'm skating with a cartoon, 'cause he starts going into other voices. It's a little fun," Nancy Kerrigan said of her partner, former "Full House" star Dave Coulier .

"Skating With Celebrities" airs on FOX, which is owned by News Corp., the parent company of FOXNews.com.

FOX News' Mike Waco contributed to this report.