Another weekend, another allegation about bad behaviour behind the scenes of the UK’s biggest entertainment TV show, with former contestant Laura Whitmore alleging she was the target of “inappropriate behaviour” when she took part in Strictly Come Dancing.
The TV presenter was partnered with professional dancer Giovanni Pernice in 2016, whom she has not named in her account. Saturday she penned an Instagram post saying:
I was trying not to comment on recent press speculation until the BBC review is complete but feel there is a lot of misinformation in the press and I want to help and show support by setting the record straight.”
Whitmore said she voiced her concerns during her time on the show, in which the pair became the seventh to be eliminated.
“I initially raised concerns back in 2016,” she wrote. “I thought my experience was specific to me but I’ve since learned I was wrong.
“The aim of this is to show a pattern of behaviour that I believe needs to stop.
“I am not looking for anything, just an acceptance that what happened to me in the rehearsal rooms during my time on BBC Strictly was wrong and that it won’t happen to anyone else again.”
“I know the BBC and all outlets continue to do their best to be better, but for that to happen we must speak up,” she said.
The BBC reported that its own press office announced it would not comment on Whitmore’s claims.
Pernice has been the subject of claims by his 2023 partner, actress Amanda Abbington, who left the show “for medical reasons” but later she had been diagnosed with PTSD following her time rehearsing with Pernice, and that his behaviour was “unkind, unnecessary and mean.”
Pernice denies all the allegations made against him, and the BBC investigation is expected to be concluded in the coming week. He has not been included in the lineup for the show this year, Strictly Come Dancing’s 20th anniversary.
The show remains one of the BBC’s most successful ever productions, running for two decades and being sold to more than 60 territories across the world, with many international broadcasters renaming it Dancing With the Stars.
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