Motsi Mabuse: 'You have to be open to the Strictly curse for it to happen'

Strictly Come Dancing judge Motsi Mabuse has said that the show’s famous “curse” only happens if celebrities are open to an affair in the first place – joking that’s why she doesn’t go to parties.

The elder sister of dancer Oti Mabuse joined the judging panel this year after a long stint starring in Germany’s Let’s Dance, but has shrugged off any controversy about the well-known Strictly curse, in which contestants often end up having affairs with their show partners, by saying their relationships must already be in trouble.

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Asked about it during an interview with The Sun, she said: “Yeah, I did hear that it’s a thing here. People say it’s a curse but I think you have to be open to it for it to happen and that something must have been wrong [in a relationship] beforehand as well.

“But you know, if you work in this sort of world, adult things happen. Everyone goes for a drink and, whoops-a-daisy! That’s why I don’t go to parties!”

Mabuse is married to her own former dance partner from her competition days, Evgenij Voznyuk, who she got together with following 11 years of marriage to Timo Kulczak.

She was divorced by the time she got into a relationship with Voznyuk, but joked that as a dancer she had no opportunity to meet anyone else other than fellow pros.

"I missed my youth because I was dancing, I didn’t do all the crazy stuff,” she said. “I didn’t have boyfriends or anything – the first man I met I married!”

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She said she had realised after retiring from competitive dance how much she missed her old partner, and had begun dating him, going on to marry him in 2017.

The pair now have a young daughter together who accompanies Mabuse to work during the day rather than going to nursery.

Last year’s Strictly winners Stacey Dooley and Kevin Clifton began dating after meeting on the show, with Dooley’s ex-boyfriend Sam Tucknott giving an angry interview about how he’d been treated, although the pair say there was no cheating and that the relationship was already over by the time they got together.

It was a less controversial romance for Gemma Atkinson and Gorka Marquez, who were both single when they met on the 2017 series and welcomed their first child together earlier this year.