Strictly Come Dancing star Oti Mabuse revealed that she fell out with her family over her choice of wanting to become a professional dancer turning her back on civil engineering
Oti Mabuse was one of Strictly Come Dancing’s most skilful dancers for many years. And during her reign on the BBC ballroom show, she was crowned winner twice. But now, it has come to light that her road to stardom came at a huge cost to her relationship with her mother, as the pair fell out and did not speak for an entire year due to her career choice.
Oti, who has a civil engineering degree, was meant to pursue a career in that industry. But her love for professional dancing left her with the difficult decision to turn her back on the industry her family had set out for her.
While on the panel of Loose Women, she revealed that her family dynamic took a huge blow similar to that of Brooklyn Beckham and his family. The panel asked Oti if she had ever experienced problems with her own family, to which she candidly opened up about her own issues.
She explained: “I have a similar relationship – for me, in my family, especially when anybody is upset, we just don’t talk to each other. Like, I need space because what will come out my mouth, I can’t take it back.”
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She added: “But I’ve had situations like with my mum, leaving engineering and saying to her, ‘I’m going to be a professional dancer,’ we didn’t talk for a year. A whole year – and I think it’s love, ‘I paid for this future for you, I want you to be safe, dancing is not maybe a safe career and it’s really upsetting you’re not doing what I want,’ but for me it was like, I can’t handle that in my life.”
The mum of one continued: “I needed her to really support me so that when I walk into a room, I know that I’m being supported by my whole family, and until we had a Kumbaya moment, we didn’t speak. I had a glass of wine, and then I was like, ‘Okay, talk’.”
This is on the back of reports surrounding the Beckhams and their ongoing feud. It was recently revealed that Brooklyn had asked his parents, David and Victoria Beckham to contact him only via his lawyers.
It has been claimed that the 26 year old son of the famous duo said that he did not want his parents to make public statements about him on social media. But this is not the first time Oti, whose sister Motsi is on the Strictly judging panel, has spoken about the breakdown of her family’s relationship.
Explaining its demise, she admitted on Desert Island Discs: “[My parents were against it, absolutely against it. They were like, this is the worst decision ever. But I really, really wasn’t happy because being an engineer full time meant that I couldn’t dance.”
She added: “I didn’t feel like that was something that I was ready to give up at that point… it just didn’t sit right with my soul, and it didn’t sit right with my heart.” While Oti and her mother Dudu have patched up their fractured relationship, she also claimed that they occasionally clash over the way her mother speaks about her grandchildren.
She said: “In my African culture, we just say what we want, we’re just very brutally honest – but if my mum says something I don’t like, maybe about the baby’s weight, I’m like, ‘Change your language or you’re not going to see her’.”
She continued: “Sometimes when you’re parents say what they say, it gives you tough skin, but as a mother now, that hard skin is a shield [for my daughter] now.”
