Strictly Come Dancing champion Oti Mabuse has blasted critics who reckon she’s only on TV because of “box ticking”.
She knows some producers might perceive her as “the shiny black girl”, but insists: “No. I am more than that.”
Oti, 30, adds: “In this country there is this thing called ‘box ticking’. People like to throw it in your face.
“They like to go: ‘You are ticking a box. You are just here because you are black, you are just here because you are African, you are just here because you are a black woman or you are just here because you are a gay black man’.
“Sometimes I will get a job or an opportunity and be like, I don’t want to be the shiny black girl in this situation. You go, ‘well it does not look like you had me’ (in mind).
“It feels like, oh we need a little bit of this, so let’s add a little bit of this and a little bit of shiny.”
Oti’s comments come two years after fellow dance star Louie Spence, 52, used the “box ticking” phrase to blast Strictly bosses for hiring Oti’s sister Motsi as a judge.
Spence, from rival ITV show Dancing on Ice, had suggested Motsi, 40, was “a nobody”.
Oti’s riposte came during a chat on The Rhythm of Life podcast.
The dancer is a panellist on ITV’s The Masked Dancer and appeared as a captain on BBC predecessor The Greatest Dancer – and was not critical of either programme.
She said she shrugs off negative comments as she arrived in Britain, from her native South Africa, with nothing.
“No one can tell me anything as I came here with a 20kg bag and a flight ticket,” she says.
Oti is married to Romanian dancer Marius Lepure, 38, and says they faced difficulties as an interracial couple in South Africa.
She said: “In South Africa we went out for the first time together and it was just eyes everywhere. I remember moving to the UK and it was the first time as a woman I felt like ‘Oh my God, nobody is staring at us like we are weird. This is actually normal’.”
Oti has been on Strictly since 2015 and is said to be on a six-figure contract.
She has won the Glitterball trophy two years in a row – first with actor Kelvin Fletcher, 37, and last year with comic Bill Bailey, 56.
