Emma Willis: ‘I’m ready for negativity on Strictly – I won’t engage with it’

Within the week, Strictly Come Dancing will return to BBC screens having been primped, plucked and bedazzled into a new version of itself.

It’s out with Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman, in with Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe.

The selection process was as cloak and dagger as you might expect. The Beeb sent cars to smuggle hopefuls to a secret location. The drivers were told it was for a new show called The Great Garden Glow Up.

‘It was like being a spy in the Cold War,’ Widdicombe tells the Metro and other press. ‘I was pretending I was in a John Le Carré book.’

All three initially auditioned with other presenters, in pairs. Widdicombe says he was told early doors it wouldn’t be a trio. ‘I remember thinking, that’s a shame because that would give me more chance to get it,’ he laughs on our video call with his fellow hosts.

Widdicombe was in a callback room ‘pacing and sweating’, when Radebe walked in. Both reacted with a quizzical ‘what?!’

Radebe recalls: ‘I was like, are they pitching us against each other?’ Widdicombe had the same thought: ‘Yeah, the two weirdos against each other, is that how this is working?’

But then Willis was brought in. That was the first time they were in a room together, she says. ‘They said, listen, this is just kind of last minute. What we’ve seen across the week, we just wondered, could it work as a three, and how would you three be together? We were like, don’t know, hopefully good.’

We aren’t reinventing the wheel. We’re not rocket scientists. We’re working on an entertainment show about dancing.

Despite being three people who ‘didn’t really know each other’, the result was a success. ‘It was like when you go on a date and you’re like, that was good,’ says Widdicombe.

They took a selfie to commemorate the moment, just in case they made it all the way. Nobody can remember whose phone it’s on.

When we speak, they still haven’t ironed out who will be doing what on the ballroom floor. They each tried a bit of it all during the auditions.

‘It’s not like you’re Tess, you’re Claudia,’ says Widdicombe, pointing at his new co-hosts. ‘We don’t want it to feel like those roles are divided and different. We want it to feel like a team.’

Of the new trio, Willis will have the best sense of what’s coming, having fronted Big Brother, The Voice UK and Love Is Blind. When controversy is alluded to, she’s unfazed.

‘I don’t know if it helps,’ she says, referring to her past live telly experience, ‘but I definitely know what to expect.’

She elaborates: ‘I’m ready for the comparisons. I am ready for the negative things, opinions that can come with these things. But on the flip side, those things I don’t engage with or read, and there are always positives as well. 

‘We aren’t reinventing the wheel. We’re not rocket scientists. We’re working on an entertainment show about dancing that is meant to bring joy to everybody watching it. Hopefully we can be a small part of that joy and have a really lovely time doing it.’

Turning 50 this year seems to have bolstered Willis. ‘I’m more sure of myself. I know what I want to do. I’m not going to apologise for myself and my successes, like I’ve done for the last 25 years,’ she says, having ever-so-slightly bristled when another journalist raised the question of her age.

She adds: ‘We’re incredibly lucky to be doing what we do, and I’m not about to step down and slow down for anything. I say, bring it on. Life is short. So take these opportunities when they come your way, because at some point they’ll stop.’

Strictly brings scrutiny, but she never considered saying no. ‘There’s obviously a fear, because of the enormity of it and you have nerves about being good enough to step into the role,’ she says. 

‘But there’s definitely no hesitation. As a presenter, there are few shows on for that length of time that are live television, and they’re few and far between now, so it was definitely a positive aspect of it for me.’

Radebe admits he did have a little wobble when the call came through. ‘I had to sit with myself and say, “What? Who do you think you are?” 

‘But then I called my agent, and he was the one that said to me, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”.

‘If anybody was afforded this opportunity amongst my peers, any one of them would jump on it, whether they would want to do it or not. I feel, and this is what he said to me, this is not tennis, this is not football. You’re speaking about your passion.’

With a taste of the dynamic that will come to BBC One next weekend, Widdicombe then quips: ‘And that’s why you turned down Match of the Day, isn’t it?v

Whether we’ll recognise him will be another matter. ‘I am going to dabble in fake tan,’ says Widdicombe. ‘Why not?’

Strictly Come Dancing starts at 7.25pm on BBC One and iPlayer on Saturday, September 19.

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