Oti: It’s a stretch to get Strictly back on screens
STRICTLY star Oti Mabuse has revealed how the dancers are preparing for a challenging new series.
The professionals are living together at a hotel in Berkshire before the show starts again some time next month.
Oti, who won last year’s series with former Emmerdale actor Kelvin Fletcher, said:
“For the first part, all the pros will be quarantining, learning our group numbers and pre- recording them.
“We’ll have to be flexible to make the show work.”
She spoke as the BBC’s head of entertainment admitted Strictly was turning out to be the most difficult programme to film during the pandemic.
Kate Phillips said there will have to be altered sets and changes to hair, make- up and costumes. She added: “The pros have been isolating together for the last couple of weeks, they are now rehearsing together, the big dance numbers. It looks so good seeing them dance.
Disciplined
“We are having to adapt, the set is having to be altered, we are not quite sure at this stage how much audience we will be able to have in. And we have to look at Dave Arch and his band and how hair and make- up and costume will work.”
Meanwhile Oti, 31, told Red magazine about Strictly judge sister Motsi setting her up with Marius Lepure, 37 – now
Oti’s husband.
She said: “When I said I wanted to become a professional dancer, Motsi suggested a few boys I could trial with as s dance partners.
“Marius was the first and only try- out I had. I cancelled ed all the others. I was like,
‘ This is the one’.”
And she spoke of how she e had driven her own career forward, saying: “I think it’s s a good thing to be ambitious and to set your sights on things. I don’t mean I’ll take people out to achieve what I want...
“I work hard and I’m disciplined. If I try something, I’m going to give it 120 per cent.”
In her wide- ranging interview, Oti also discussed showing off her natural hair for the first time recently in photos on Instagram.
She said: “There were so many people saying they’d never seen my real hair, as I had never wanted to show that side of myself before.
“It was really only close friends and the Strictly pros who had seen me like this.
“It was a thing, you kn know? You need to feel co comfortable opening up about what you look lik like, before you decide wh whether or not you wa want to share that with ot other people.”
● The October issue of Re Red goes on sale today in supermarkets.