Laura Whitmore has spoken out about certain aspects of her time on Strictly Come Dancing that she struggled with most.
The Love Island presenter took part in Strictly back in 2016, where she was partnered with Giovanni Pernice, and was the sixth celebrity to bow out of the competition.
In the past, Laura has spoken openly about how Strictly wasn’t the most enjoyable experience for her, and in a new interview on Jamie Laing and Francis Boulle’s Private Parts podcast, she explained more.
She told the hosts: “What I didn’t like was being removed from everybody and having to spend 12 hours a day with this one person.
“It did not become about the dancing. I just wanted to dance.”
Laura continued: “I did not want to play the game of doing red carets with your dance partner and stuff like that, which a lot of people thought you should be doing. I did not want to do that.”
Back in 2018, Laura published a blog on HuffPost UK in which she outlined the difficulties she faced when she took part in Strictly two years earlier.
“I cried every day,” she wrote. “And I really was broken, both mentally and physically, by the end. To the outside world I tried to suck it up and smile, and I did that to the best of my ability, but it affected me deeply.
“My friends and family knew that I was struggling. And they were there for me. The media, however, saw me as blonde bait in a sequinned dress.”
Earlier this year, Laura took over as the host of Love Island, presenting the ITV2 show’s first ever winter series.
Since then, there have been conflicting reports about whether it will go ahead in its usual summer slot, due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Listen to Laura’s full Private Parts interview here.