Rachel Riley admits she wrote her will before filming dangerous TV show

Daily Mirror

a day ago

The Countdown star wrote her will before she started filming new ITV series SHARK! Celebrity Infested Waters, and refused to even tell her daughters about the show
Rachel Riley has revealed she took the precautionary step of writing her will before filming ITV 's daring new reality series SHARK! Celebrity Infested Waters.
The Countdown star is joining a star-studded line up, including Helen George, Lucy Punch, Sir Lenny Henry, Ross Noble, Ade Adepitan, and Dougie Poynter, for the thrilling wildlife series set in the shark-filled waters of the Bahamas. Although she has had her fair share of experience with filming TV shows, Rachel confessed to feeling genuine fear before embarking on the underwater adventure.
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She told the Daily Mail's Weekend Magazine: "I wrote my will before we went. This trip made me want to make sure everything was signed, just in case. They're wild animals. You're scuba diving. Anything could happen."
SHARK! Celebrity Infested Waters challenges its famous participants to confront their fear of sharks by completing a series of hair-raising underwater tasks.
The show is filmed around the island of Bimini, a destination that is known for being the shark capital of the world. With SHARK! ITV has attempted to blend high-stakes entertainment with an important message about marine conservation.
Rachel went on to share a disturbing memory from a holiday she went on with her husband, former Strictly Come Dancing professional Pasha Kovalev, that sparked some of her shark-related fears.
She added: "We were in the Galapagos islands and we saw a bright pink thing in the water. We thought it was a discarded life jacket. It was a sea lion that had just been bitten in half by a bull shark, and it was trying to crawl out of the water. We had been snorkelling off the boat in those same waters."
Rachel decided against telling her young daughters, Maven, five, and Noa, three, about what her new TV venture entailed until after filming began.
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"I didn't tell them what I was going away to do because I didn't want to scare them," she admitted. "It was only when I was in Bimini on a video call by the water that I said, 'Do you want to see some sharks?' They said, 'Yeah!' If you fall in the water with a bull shark you're a goner, but the girls said, 'You've got to go swimming with them, Mummy!' They were too young to have any fear about what I was doing."
The Countdown star looked back on the frightening experience, shuddering: "Swimming with sharks was like being with the Mafia. Everything is fine while everything's fine and everyone's laughing, but they could turn in an instant and there would be nothing you could do about it."
ITV has promised viewers adrenaline-filled scenes where the celebrities gradually work their way up from swimming with safer shark species to facing hammerheads, bull sharks, and even tiger sharks.
Besides testing the courage of the show's stars, SHARK! aims to educate both participants and viewers on the ecological significance of sharks.
ITV's Head of Entertainment Commissioning, Katie Rawcliffe, proudly stated that the project offers audiences a unique blend of "once-in-a-lifetime challenges" mixed with vital environmental messaging.