Oti Mabuse has admitted that the high-pressure environment highlighted by the Strictly Come Dancing scandal comes from the professional dancers, not the producers.
Mabuse, 33, joined Strictly in 2015 and lifted the glitterball trophy twice, in 2019 with the Emmerdale actor Kelvin Fletcher and in 2020 with comedian Bill Bailey. She last competed with the former rugby player Ugo Monye before leaving the show in 2021. She now appears as a judge on Dancing on Ice.
The show was surrounded by scandal last year when bullying claims mounted against two professional dancers, Giovanni Pernice and Graziano Di Prima, which led to a debate around how seriously the professionals take the show.
Though Mabuse wasn’t working on the show at the time of the allegations, she has said that if there is pressure on the professional dancers, it’s not created by the producers.
“It’s something that comes from us, and that’s something that we have to own up to,” she told The Guardian.
She added that the dancing programme is ultimately an entertainment show “and your job is to give joy to people”.
“Anything else, I think would be a personal desire, and how you work is how you work, and also how you’ve been brought up,” Mabuse continued, revealing that she would often tell Fletcher: “You’re not practicing hard enough. I want to win. Let’s go!”
The scandal erupted after Sherlock actor Amanda Abbington claimed she was subjected to a “toxic environment” and “inappropriate, mean, nasty bullying” behaviour while partnered with professional dancer Pernice. The Italian dancer was dropped from the show and an investigation into his behaviour was launched – and the BBC upheld some, but not all, of Abbington’s complaints. Pernice has strongly denied all allegations.
It was also found that another Strictly pro dancer, Graziano Di Prima, had acted inappropriately during rehearsals of the 2023 series with his celebrity dance partner Zara McDermott. Di Prima was dropped from the show, and he said that he “deeply regret[s] the events that led to my departure from Strictly”.
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The BBC addressed the scandal by implementing improved welfare measures, which included adding chaperones into rehearsal rooms for the 2024 series.
As reports about the scandal emerged last year, several celebrity contestants came forward to speak about their experience, with some attributing the pressure coming from the producers, and others saying it was a clash between different objectives.
Paralympian Will Bayley, who appeared on the 2019 series of the show and was forced to withdraw six weeks in after tearing his knee ligaments in rehearsals, claimed at the time that rehearsals with Janette Manrara left him with the “horrific” injury he’ll “never get over”. He ultimately blamed the producers for putting pressure on Manrara.
Strictly judge Craig Revel Horwood also weighed in on the scandal, saying that some professional dancers can carry toxic training styles they learnt from a young age into the training room.
“I know how I was trained and it was tough,” he said. “I had a Russian ballet teacher who used to have a cane and she would whack us with it. Just so you’re not pulling up from the thigh – doing a déboulés for instance to engage your hamstrings.”
“I mean obviously that sort of teaching wouldn’t be available today. Things have changed and come a long way in 40 years since I trained.”
“Training everyone is different, what they learn they carry on into the training room,” he said. “I think it’s a good thing they are bringing people into the rehearsal rooms, they are mediators.”
Meanwhile, last year’s Strictly winner Chris McCausland said he could see where the “clash” comes from: “Some people’s objective might be to survive another week, whereas from the dancers’ point of view, the objective is to succeed because that’s their profession; that’s what their reputation is based on.”
