Oti Mabuse has revealed she has got the documentary-making bug
(Picture: Doug Peters/PinPep)Oti Mabuse has the documentary-making bug and says she would “100 percent” love the opportunity to do more.
The former Strictly professional dancer, 32, got her first taste in Oti Mabuse - My South Africa, which aired on BBC One on Thursday.
In it, she could be seen returning to her childhood home, to revisit the people and places that inspired her to be the dancer and woman she is today.
On her journey, she met an array of inspirational people including musicians, farmers and dancers as she delved back into her own family’s dark past under apartheid.
“I love telling stories anyway and I love getting to know people, but getting to know people and talking to them about their lives and own capacity and going back to South Africa and hearing people out at both sides – the good, the bad, and the different, It was just a wonderful experience,” she told the Standard.
“To know how people are feeling in those moments and their truths because everybody experiences the world with their own eyes so this documentary for me was about talking to my family and experiencing their situations which made me understand a lot about a lot of things growing up now. But also other people outside of my family and doing the whole travelling, the hardships, the fun bits, you know the things that are still hard for them today,” she continued.
While the sister of Motsi Mabuse is in no hurry to try and steal Louis Theroux’s documentary making crown, she feels that there is definitely a gap in the market for her.
“He’s legends of legends I wouldn’t even touch that. But what I do love is travelling, I do love going to areas and kind of finding out how people integrate and feel about where they live, their current climate and their situations and their hardships. That for me was so eye opening, it was so emotional that I could go into the history of South Africa and I could go to the future and look at that as well. So if that’s something that I would be given an opportunity to do, 100 percent.
“Also talking about Africa, you know, for the longest of times we’ve had people who weren’t from there talking to I would say the media about Africa, but this time you have somebody who is from there. I know the people, I know the culture and they’ve said things that I don’t know that inspired me to talk about and enlightening I think as well.”
Mabuse is a woman in-demand right now.
The second series of The Masked Dancer in which she served on the panel recently aired on ITV and she will next been seen taking her place behind the judge’s table once again when Dancing On Ice returns to the network in January.
Somewhere in-between that all she also found the time to take place in a musical flashmob at London’s Westfield White City shopping centre to promote Disney’s Disenchanted.
The highly anticipated sequel to the 2007 original Enchanted starring Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey and Idina Menzel, arrives on Disney+ today
The routine was set to a brand-new track from the film, titled Love Power which is performed by Menzel’s character Nancy and self-confessed Disney fan Mabuse couldn’t have been more excited to take part.
“I got transformed into a princess and got to wear a blue dress with a tiara and sparkly shoes - it was really lovely,” she enthused.
It was also the very first time that Mabuse - who named Nala from The Lion King as her favourite Disney princess - had been part of a flashmob, something she described as a real “bucketlist moment”.
“I mean, I didn’t even know whether they did them here in the UK, or maybe I just don’t go to places where they do them. I’ve never been caught in one. I’ve only seen them on YouTube and thought this was like an American thing. It was great,” she laughed as she recalled the joy especially on the faces of the children who got to watch it take place in-person.
“I think Disney is so popular and so loved by so many people that to get an opportunity like this is incredible,” she added.
