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Louise Thomas
Editor
Oti Mabuse opened up about how working on Strictly Come Dancing took a toll on her marriage.
The 34-year-old two-time Strictly champion and Dancing on Ice judge, has revealed how she became emotionally detached from her husband, Marius Lepure, 41, when she joined the dancing competition in 2014 and became fixated on winning the glitterball trophy.
Speaking to celebrity relationship coach Paul Carrick Brunson on his We Need To Talk podcast, Mabuse confessed that she started to neglect her marriage as a result of her commitment to the show.
“[Strictly] is all you think about 24/7,” she admitted. “It’s all you do. You’re on tour, you’re doing other Strictly-associated shows. You’re not really 100 per cent in the marriage, because this is gold. The trophy is handmade, by the way, and you’re fixated on it.”
Mabuse, whose sister Motsi is currently a professional judge on the show, said she didn’t communicate with her closest friends and family during the opening years of the show.
“ I didn’t communicate with my husband,” she said. “It was just this one goal that I wanted to achieve so, so, so, so so much,”
Lepure, who also appeared on the podcast, explained that he understood what the show required of Mabuse because he also works in the dancing industry.
“I’m in that business. I knew what it takes to be a successful dancer and choreographer in a show like that, so it was nothing new. But obviously it’s tough and it hurts and it’s not the easiest time but you see the end of the tunnel,” he said.
Mabuse eventually lifted the glitterball trophy twice; with the Emmerdale actor Kelvin Fletcher in 2019, and with comedian Bill Bailey in 2020.
The pro dancer admitted her “lows” had left her in floods of tears in the shower, fully clothed.
“In my head, I felt, ‘I’m not good enough,’” she continued. “‘I’m not good enough in my job.’ All of this pressure that I [had] – I’m representing black women. I’m representing African women. I stand for so much – if I can’t get this job done, I’m not good enough. I don’t deserve to be here.”
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She continued: “[Marius] came in, he got in the shower, fully clothed, he picked me up, and he just hugged me and held me. He said, ‘It’s just a job. You have family, you have friends, you have me and you have food’. In that moment, I realised that no matter how much I have this career – and I love the show and everything it encompasses – at the end of the day, I get to go home to the things that make me more. It is not who I am, it’s what I do.”
The pair met while working together as professional dance partners, and she left her home Pretoria in South Africa in 2012 for Nuremberg, Germany, to work and be with him. They got married in 2014 and announced the birth of their first child, a baby daughter, on Christmas day 2023.
