It made me collapse in the shower fully clothed – confesses Oti Mabuse

STRICTLY Come Dancing star Oti Mabuse has revealed how she became so consumed with working on the celebrity dancing competition that she was “not really into” her own wedding and ended up in the shower fully clothed.

Oti opens up to relationship coach Paul Carrick Brunson on his podcast We Need To Talk, describing the physical and emotional detachment from her husband, Romanian dancer Marius Lepure, when she took part in the hit BBC1 show, a year after they married in 2014 .

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She says: “It’s not strictly a TV show. It’s a lifestyle choice. It’s the only thing you think about 24/7. It’s everything you do. You’re on tour doing other Strictly-associated shows. You’re not really 100% in the marriage because this is gold. By the way, the trophy is handmade and you are fixated on it.

“[During Strictly]. I didn’t communicate with my friends, I didn’t communicate with my family, I didn’t communicate with my husband. It was just this one goal that I wanted to achieve so, so, so, so badly.”

The eight-time Latin dance champion, who has a degree in civil engineering, adds: “It was a lot about me in those years.”

Oti met Marius, 42, in 2012 during a dance trial in Nuremberg, Germany – where he also ran a dance school – after searching for a new professional dance partner from her home in Pretoria, South Africa.

Speaking to Celebs Go Dating and Married At First Sight love guru Paul, Oti recalls how Marius declared his love for her within a week of meeting and then proposed after two years. The couple worked together on the 2015 series Let’s Dance, the German version of Strictly Come Dancing, before embarking on a long-distance relationship after Oti moved to London to take part in the British show.

Appears with his wife in the podcast, which goes live tonight [Tuesday] at 6 p.m., Marius says he understood firsthand what the job required for her to win.

Recalling a time when he flew from Germany to London Stansted before renting a car and taking a 500-mile round trip to Blackpool for the briefest of reunions with Oti, Marius said: ‘We were literally together for three or four hours and she was like : ‘I need to sleep, I’m sorry’ and I said, ‘Okay, let’s just cuddle for a few hours’ and that was it.

‘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 can see the end of the tunnel.”

Ultimately, Oti’s hard work paid off.

In 2019, she finished in first place alongside ex Emmerdale actor Kelvin Fletcher before winning again a series later with comedian Bill Bailey – the first ever professional dancer to lift the coveted Glitterball trophy two years in a row.

Before that, Oti said she was at her “lowest” level working with “a celebrity who I just couldn’t get to love the work as much as I wanted to” and who she says “couldn’t teach.”

One evening after rehearsals, Marius returned home to find his wife fully clothed, crumpled and her heart breaking on the floor of the shower.

“It was the lowest moment,” Oti remembers.

Strictly curse – The Lowdown

STRICTLY The latest series of Come Dancing has already been hit by rumors of a BBC show ‘curse’ – but what is it?

A host of Strictly Come Dancing stars have been hit by the Strictly Curse over the past twenty years.

This is where celebrities who may or may not be attached to the outside world become more than friends with their professional partners.

It is said that a total of twenty relationships have been affected over the twenty years of the show so far.

It has seen relationships crumble as dancefloor romances and punishing rehearsal schedules have been blamed.

This includes the partnerships of Louise and Jamie Redknapp, as well as Kevin Clifton and Karen Hauer.

Judge Craig Revel Horwood once controversially said of the curse: ‘I consider it a blessing, to be honest. One is married, the other had a girlfriend, but my point in this whole story is: if you happen to Strictly, sometimes you end up in a relationship that doesn’t work out anyway.

“Something has to be wrong in your relationship for it all to go wrong.”

Series one winner Brendan Cole left his fiancée, fellow Strictly professional Camilla Dallerup, while filming for the very first series in the spring of 2004.

Brendan is said to have fallen for his celebrity partner and inaugural winner Natasha Kaplinsky, although the duo did not confirm they were in a romantic relationship.

“In my head I felt: ‘I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough at my job’. All this pressure that I [had] – I represent black women. I represent African women. I face so much: if I can’t do this job, I’m not good enough. I don’t deserve to be here.”

“[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’.

“It was then that I realized that no matter how much I have this career – and I love the show and everything it entails – at the end of the day I get to go home to the things that make me more. It’s not who I am, it’s what I do.”

Oti and Marius, both big fans of mentorship, promptly booked a Tony Robbins program, in which participants explore identity, core emotions, intimate relationships and what drives their actions. The American self-help legend has worked with everyone from Donald Trump and Bill Clinton to Oprah and the Kardashians.

“We had to rebuild our priorities – or my priorities,” says Oti. “[At the Tony Robbins conference] they asked us what our priorities were, how you list them, and how your partner lists them. My priorities [were] work, career and then love and his was love, work and career, and we had to turn that off. We had to organize that completely again.”

Soon after, Oti’s mindset – and marriage – had changed.

She confirms that love is now “one hundred percent” her top priority, saying: “It took [until] the next series… for me to fall in love with work again in a completely different way, to fall in love with my husband again in a completely different way, to be more communicative with my friends and my family.

“That was the beginning of the change. And then I crushed it! There was no more shower that cried. Just multiple trophies!”

Oti quit Strictly in 2022 after seven years and became a judge on Dancing On Ice and presented her own dating show Romeo & Due before taking part in the latest series of Great Celebrity Bake Off in aid of Stand Up to Cancer.

But off-screen, her biggest role has truly begun. Last November, she and Marius welcomed their first child, a girl they never publicly named, two months early.

Speaking about her sixteen-hour birth at London’s University College Hospital before their daughter spent six weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, Oti explains: “It was Christmas and it felt like the whole country was so happy. I was like, ‘This is the worst point of my life ever.’

I felt, ‘I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough at my job

Oti Mabuse

Their baby was finally brought home on Christmas Eve and since entering motherhood, Oti has realized she now regrets waiting so long to have a baby.

When Brunson asks what she would have done differently if she could turn back time and relive her career, she replies, “I would have had my daughter sooner. I’m not old. I’m 34, but I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I wish I had more time. I wish I had done this sooner.

“We’ve both always wanted kids. We come from big families, but because of dancing, my body is the way I pay the bills, so we had to finish the career and stop letting ourselves be like, ‘This is the right thing moment for me.’ I wanted nothing more than to start a family.”

According to Oti, she and Marius are “still figuring out” how to balance work, parenthood and life, which she says is the biggest challenge to their marriage, especially due to the lack of support from foreign-based family, including Oti’s harshly judgmental sister. Motsi, who lives with her husband and young daughter near Frankfurt, Germany.

“We do it, only us. We have no extra help. We have no family here. It’s just us. Such is the time the challenge ours time, his own time, work time, family time, baby time and that can sometimes lead to conflict.”

But besides the grit, determination and resilience that runs through Oti’s veins, her marriage to Marius is clearly one of the strongest. As parents, she speaks warmly about taking on an equal share of responsibilities, which allows them to bring the best. professional and personal at the table.

‘When I’m working, when I’m promoting our tour [Viva Carnival] and I have to work for a week straight, he can take the baby and travel the world, and I’m still fine with that,” says Oti. “We were both in this together and it’s amazing.”

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