Oti Mabuse on Strictly Come Dancing return and why she'll always love the show
Oti Mabuse has teased she may be up for another waltz on the Strictly Come Dancing dance floor, after seeing another much-loved favourite make a triumphant return. The South African-born star left the hit BBC show in 2022 to pursue other telly ops after seven series.
Oti went on to feature in I'm A Celebrity, be a panellist on The Masked Dancer and a judge on Dancing On ice - as well as have her daughter in 2023. The 34-year-old star says watching Aljaz Skorjanec go back for the most recent series and witnessing how much he loved it has certainly given her food for thought. 'Everyone asks me [if I'd return to Strictly],' muses Oti.
'I think right now, with a daughter and everything I'm doing, I'm quite busy, and I'm happy with what I'm doing at the minute. But never say never. The doors are always open, which is really, really nice. Aljaž [Škorjanec] went back and he's doing really well. I went back to choreograph with him and he's just in a different space. He's absolutely sensational. So, you never know.'
Oti took away two glitterballs from her Strictly run - with actor Kelvin Fletcher in 2019 and comedian Bill Bailey the following year.
Despite hanging up her professional dancers shoes, she still is a big part of the show, helping with choreograph. 'When I look back on Strictly, I think the whole seven-year journey was amazing,' she reminisces. 'I say that the show brought me everything, like me sitting here today, and the relationship still very much continues. There were ups, there were downs; if you can imagine being the first Black anything, anywhere, there will always be ups and downs.'
Born in Pretoria, Oti studied civil engineering at university before her professional ballroom dancing career. She followed in the footsteps of her elder sister, Strictly judge Motsi, 44. Oti took part in the German series Let's Dance for two series before she joined Strictly. Moving to the UK with her now husband Marius Iepure, 42, also a dancer, Oti opened up about her sense of belonging when she moved her.
'When I lived in Germany, Marius and I used to come to London," she recalls. "The best dance school was in Croydon, and all the best couples would go there. I remember the first time we'd be walking the streets, and there were so many interracial couples.
'I would say to Marius, 'There's us! There's us! Oh, there we go again!' And I was just like, 'Wow, where have I been living? Why am I not here? I just see so many multicultural couples,' and it felt like, 'I need that diversity in my life.' And when I came here, every time we took a lesson, we'd always take a walk. It just felt amazing; it felt like I belonged.'
Oti's career has taken off since Strictly, and seen her on some of the biggest entertainment shows in the country. As well as The Masked Dancer and Dancing On Ice, she fronted her own ITV breakfast show, a BBC documentary about South Africa. She also hopes of being a regular on Loose Women.
Juggling work with being a mum to her one-year-daughter has been a challenge, Oti admits, but one she is loving. 'Motherhood is amazing,' she beams. 'It's really incredible. But if I'm being brutally honest, it's also the most challenging and exhausting journey of self-discovery that you will ever be on.'
Oti says her girl is keeping her on her toes and has already developed a go get it attitude - just like her mum. 'I have a one-year-old who's very expressive but doesn't speak, so when something's happening, I don't know what's going on,' explains Oti.
'But she's so incredible, fun and so determined. She's like a little me – and it scares the life out of me, because my mum didn't know what to do with me and I moved to another continent. So now I'm like, 'I will follow her wherever she goes. If she's going to a jungle in the Amazon, we're moving to the jungle in the Amazon.' She's a very determined child and it's exhausting trying to keep up, but I love it.'
The star opened up in the jungle last year about the impact of body shaming. She said people would criticise her weight gain and call her 'fat', saying the comments came when she was being healthy for the first time and they hurt.
Oti says she's long had a turbulent and 'toxic' relationship with her body as a dancer. 'Growing up, I always thought that the people who did the best (in dancing) were the thinnest, and you always felt like, 'If I need to be successful, I need to look like that,'' she said. 'And I think it's not just Latin and ballroom dancers, it's across the board. All dancers, we always feel like that.
'So we then have this very toxic relationship with our bodies, and even when you walk into the room, and if you've lost weight, they go, 'Oh my gosh, she looks so good.' And it's like, 'Wait, do I look good because I'm small, or do I just look good in general?' Words hold power over a lot of us as women.'
Oti says she's working on 'rebuilding' her relationship with her body. She tells: 'It will be every day, I guess, for the rest of my life, that I'll just have to work on that relationship, and hopefully by talking about it, it's going to create more of a conversation around the fact that we need to build our relationship with our bodies in a very healthy way.''
She says having her daughter - and taking time away from dancing - has helped her find peace with her body 'I'm now coming into the world as a human being who used to dance, not as a dancer," she says. "I still dance, but I'm a person first, before the dancer.
'My body has had its ups and downs; the gaining of the weight, the losing of the weight, having the baby. It's been such a rollercoaster, but I think it's normal to experience that as a woman.
'Yes, there are some moments where I feel, 'Oh my gosh, I'm not happy with what I look like,' and then I have to say to myself in the mirror, 'No, you are good. You are perfect. You have had a baby, you've had a human being come out of you. It's okay to not look perfect, as long as you move, as long as you're trying to be healthy.''
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