Strictly’s Oti: Parents wanted me to be an engineer but it didn’t sit right with my soul
OTI Mabuse is one of Strictly’s breakout stars, having lifted the coveted glitterball trophy two years on the trot.
But the star has revealed how her parents were against her pursuing her dancing dream, preferring she make use of her civil engineering degree.
Appearing on today’s Desert Island Discs, Oti recalls the reaction when she told her parents she was quitting her job because it did not ‘sit right with my soul’.
‘They were against it, absolutely against it,’ the South African-born star said.
‘They were like, this is the worst decision ever. But I really, really wasn’t happy because being an engineer full time meant that I couldn’t dance.’ She continued: ‘I didn’t feel like that was something that I was ready to give up at that point… it just didn’t sit right with my soul, and it didn’t sit right with my heart.’
Oti, 31, got a place on the civil engineering course after her family applied on her behalf, without telling her.
But she soon realised it was not the life for her. And despite the reluctance of her parents, Oti said her mother Dudu was her dance inspiration.
Dudu had not been able to realise her own ballroom dancing dreams under the apartheid regime which forbade black people to even be on the same dancefloor as whites.
But Dudu, seeing dance as a way to keep her three daughters, including Oti’s sister and Strictly judge
Motsi, safe away from the streets, set up a makeshift studio for them and their friends.
Oti, who won Strictly in
2019 with the Emmerdale star Kelvin Fletcher and then again in 2020 with comedian Bill Bailey, quit the BBC show last month but has high praise for it.
She said: ‘The way Strictly does stuff is so beautiful and pure.’
Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 today at 11am.