Oti Mabuse has revealed her biggest regret about her time on Strictly Come Dancing, admitting the one thing she would change about her time on the show given the opportunity.
Since joining Strictly in 2015, Oti has gone on to become one of the show’s most loved professionals, and last year she was the first dancer to be awarded the Glitterball Trophy for two consecutive series.
However, when looking back at her time on the show, she has insisted there’s one thing she wishes she could do differently.
Speaking to former colleague Kevin Clifton on his podcast, Oti said she wished she could dance with Danny Mac today, as she didn’t feel she was “mature enough in my head to do what I needed to do with him” at the time.
Having been frontrunners throughout the series, Oti and Danny eventually finished as runners up in the 2016 final, but she has insisted she would “not change the result, but the journey”.
“With Danny, we were at the top, so we needed to go,” Oti explained. “There [was] no room for failure, we needed to go, go, go, and it was great. But I feel like I always say to him, had I met him now, I would have made him rest more.
“The fact that we stayed at 10 wouldn’t have been because we needed to prove something, it would have been simply because we wanted to be there and we just wanted to have a good time.”
“We didn’t stop to enjoy the jokes,” she added. “Like, now, we’re best friends, but then we were so busy working, we didn’t even stop to get to know each other.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know who you are, but you’re gonna dance’ and I just wish I could redo that whole journey because mentally I’m in a different space to help him, as well, be Danny. I could have changed something, I don’t know.”
After triumphing with Bill Bailey last year, Oti is set to return to Strictly in 2021, but admitted recently that it could well be her last series with the show.
Oti will be back on our screens before then, though, as she’s set to become a panellist on The Masked Dancer when the show launches this weekend.
Listen to Oti’s full interview on The Kevin Clifton Show here.