Strictly Come Dancing professional Janette Manrara will be hanging up her dancing shoes to replace Zoe Ball as the host of It Takes Two.
The pro dancer, who has competed on eight series of the celebrity-dance spectacular, will join Rylan Clark-Neal as the new presenter of Strictly’s companion show, which airs weekdays on BBC Two during the competition.
Manrara, who is Cuban-American, will be taking on the role held by Zoe Ball since 2011, after the presenter announced her departure from ITT last month in order to focus on new projects.
Appearing on The One Show on Thursday (10 June), Manrara said that the “hardest part” of taking on the presenting job was realising that she “will not be dancing” in the forthcoming series.
“I don’t want to well up because I have been welling up a lot today,” she told hosts Alex Jones and Ronan Keating.
Manrara, who is married to fellow pro Aljaž Škorjanec, added that she would still be “a part of the Strictly family”, explaining: “I am still going to be seeing my fellow pros all the time and I will keep dancing, as they say. I will find a way to keep dancing.”
In 2020, Manrara reached the final for the first time in eight years with singer and influencer HRVY. The pair eventually lost out to Bill Bailey and Oti Mabuse.
