Graziano Di Prima is in pieces. So much so that his large, loving family won’t let him out of their sight — for fear he will take his own life.
He confesses to me he has ‘ugly thoughts’.
A month ago, Graziano, one of Strictly Come Dancing’s most likeable professional dancers, was dropped from the show following anonymous complaints from ‘third parties’.
He does not know the full particulars of what he is supposed to have done. The BBC will not give further details due to the ‘confidential nature of the circumstances’ in which the information was provided and their ‘obligations’ to ‘third parties’.
To hell with their moral duty to a thoroughly decent professional dancer who brought joy to Strictly fans for six years and taught dancing — without any complaints — for most of his adult life.
Devastated Graziano Di Prima, 30, with his wife Giada, who is also a professional dancer
What has happened to him is Kafkaesque. With sparkles on.
Four days after he was told he was being dropped from Strictly on July 9, unnamed BBC sources claimed ‘shock footage’ of ‘heated’ rehearsals with his celebrity partner and former Love Island star Zara McDermott reduced those that saw it to tears amid claims he hit, kicked and spat at her.
Zara has said she finds the footage ‘incredibly distressing’.
The BBC, these unnamed sources said, had no choice but to ‘take swift action’.
Graziano, 30, says he would never deliberately hurt anyone. ‘These vile, false allegations ruined my life in a matter of minutes — professionally, financially, psychologically and reputationally,’ he says.
He was unable to eat or sleep and couldn’t stop shaking as he drove himself half mad trying to make sense of it. Zara was ‘my friend’. Or so he’d thought.
‘Those rehearsals were nine months ago. I can be strict, I can be passionate. I want my partner to go as far as they can. She wanted that, too.
‘You can’t imagine how many times my mind has been going back and forward trying to think of something that happened all those months ago that I can’t figure out.
‘The only thing I can think of is the time I kicked the floor in frustration. We’d practised hour after hour to perfect a routine with lifts. It wasn’t easy but that’s the pressure of the show.
‘I was in pain from lifting her so many times but wanted to get it right. I thought I could save her [from elimination].
‘I wasn’t meaning to kick her. I’d never, never do that. My foot brushed her after I kicked the floor. Afterwards I hugged her and said I was sorry. There was no problem. We carried on.
Graziano with Strictly celebrity partner and former Love Island star Zara McDermott
Graziano and Giada on their wedding day in Sicily in 2022
‘I’m not sure if this is it or if it’s from when we, as professional dancers, move our partner’s leg with our foot. That is what is so difficult for me — not knowing.’
His torment is writ large across his face. ‘I thought we were friends. We were friends.’
Indeed, such was the friendship between Graziano and Zara that she messaged him umpteen times a day. Nothing in those texts suggests unpleasantness or ill-feeling. Quite the opposite. He was her ‘best friend’, her ‘number one’, her ‘biggest supporter’.
She said, ‘I just don’t want this journey to end.’
There were shared suppers that included his wife Giada who is also a professional dancer, shared photographs and jokes.
The relationship continued after Zara’s Strictly journey ended. She wanted to set up branding deals and keep dancing with him. ‘It’s unusual for people to stay as good friends as we are and connected like we are,’ she said.
She attended his dance classes, helped him promote his tour with Giada which she went to watch twice, met his lovely mother Giovanna and even offered to help Graziano and his wife hunt for a flat in London.
Her last message was sent on July 9 with a video of her cat and complaints about miserable UK weather. Graziano, in the sunshine in his native Sicily with his wife, replied: ‘I’ll try and send the sun to you.’
The exchange ended with a voice message from Giada: ‘Anyway, my darling, we’re going to see you very soon because we’re going to be in the UK so we need to go out together and we can organise dinner in our new apartment. Sending love.’
Twenty minutes later Graziano had a call with the BBC, when he was dumbstruck to learn he was not being included in the line-up for this year’s show. Zara never messaged again.
She, instead, released an Instagram statement in which she said being invited onto Strictly was ‘a childhood dream come true’.
Graziano aged six on his debut dancing show with partner Valentina Graz
Graziano on his third birthday with his mother Giovanna, father Pietro and brother Piero
She praised the production team and fellow contestants, continuing: ‘However, my experience inside the training room was very different. Reports have been made about my treatment on the show and there were witnesses to some events, as well as videos of particular incidents which are incredibly distressing to watch.’
‘It was like falling down from a building,’ says Graziano, who at the time was among the vineyards near to where he’d grown up, away from ‘all the sparkle’ of Strictly. His mother had been feeling poorly. He wanted to spend a few precious weeks with her before the hectic new season began.
‘Her statement was so, so shocking to me because she never once said she was uncomfortable or unhappy.’
Just a month before, he’d received a Letter of Intent from Strictly asking him to be part of this year’s series so had got a mortgage on an apartment 20 minutes from the studios with a second bedroom for the family he and his wife both wanted to start.
‘When I had the meeting with the BBC, I didn’t know what to say. For me, this has come out of nowhere. I literally couldn’t find any words. I was broken. Luckily we were with my mum because I don’t know what would have happened if I’d been alone — maybe I wouldn’t be talking to you now.
‘I didn’t stop shaking for a month. In those first days I had ugly thoughts [about suicide].
‘Then, I thought: ‘If the people who really love me, like my wife and family, are not questioning me for even half a second, why should I let this burn me up?’
I meet Graziano at his family’s home near Venice. His father Pietro, older brother Piero and mother are lovely people, and are desperately worried about him.
His father says that his ebullient, positive son is now so depressed he doesn’t know what to do, while his mother’s eyes well up at seeing his distress.
Growing up in a loving but humble family in Sicily, dancing was Graziano’s dream. He began classes as a six-year-old, winning his first competition before his seventh birthday. Witnessing the sacrifices his parents made to afford his 80 euro dance shoes, he always understood the value of money and of unconditional love.
Age ten he won his first Italian Championship and, by 17, was running his own classes in the family garage to fund his passion.
When, at 19, he appeared on a television dance show recorded in Rome the entire town gathered to watch, hooting car horns and celebrating.
‘Dancing is my life. It gave me everything — my wife [they met through dance], the opportunity to be who I am now. Then Strictly [he joined in 2018] changed my life even more.
Zara and Graziano performing during their first appearance on last year’s Strictly
‘It was beautiful. I learnt how to relate to people — how to give my best performances and the love I received from the British public has been enormous. I appreciate their love. That’s why this can’t be my reality. I cannot see a future without dance.’
You only need to spend a few minutes with Graziano to see his suffering. He can only sit for a short time without having to stand up to ease the pain in his back as his anxiety affects him physically as well as mentally. A doctor has prescribed pills to help him sleep.
Giada, who has been his rock, tells me when he does manage to sleep, he is forever crying out: ‘Why?’
The night before we meet he gave up on sleep and walked in circles in the garden for hours.
‘I have never experienced this kind of pain before,’ he says. ‘It’s here, too.’ He puts a fist to his stomach. ‘That feeling when I wake up. It’s so strong. Why? We were friends. What I don’t understand is if your [Strictly] experience wasn’t that pleasant, why wouldn’t you just cut the person off? Why would you come to my classes?’
To date, Graziano has partnered three other celebrities, singer Kym Marsh, DJ Vick Hope and presenter Judi Love and a further three in the Christmas specials. Each has spoken of their fondness for him. Kym has been particularly supportive as have judges and fellow dancers. He has been overwhelmed, too, by messages from hundreds of fans.
But, in this social media pile-on, there has also been appalling abuse from trolls.
His thoughts turn on a sixpence. ‘I’m sitting here in the garden seeing and feeling how beautiful it is and then, like a click of your fingers, you begin to dwell upon the awfulness of the last month. You think the most ugly things, which is the complete opposite of who I am.
‘Every morning I think: ‘Ok, this is a very bad thing but I need to be positive. I need to look forward. It will change.’
But, there’s always a little voice telling me: ‘You’re going to go down,’ because I’m living this every day and, when the unimaginable happens, you’re afraid something else unimaginable is going to grab you.’
He wells up. Graziano is one of those rare, what-you-see-is-what-you-get talents in the superficial bubble of reality TV.
‘In the beginning I was thinking: ‘Maybe somebody talked to somebody and they talked to the press and maybe this person [he doesn’t refer to Zara by name] doesn’t even know about it, which is why her statement was so shocking.’
‘I apologised [in a statement as stories about shocking footage began] as a man saying: ‘If, as a teacher, I’ve been too professional, too passionate, too competitive, too strict to you, I am sorry.’
‘But I didn’t deliberately hurt anyone. I am not a monster. I am not an abusive man.’
The apology came from the heart but such is the toxic nature of social media it was interpreted — wrongly — as an admission of guilt. As he says, ‘I wasn’t just thrown under the bus, the bus went backwards, forwards and backwards again.’
Strictly has physiotherapists to care for celebrity and professional dancers alike because injuries are commonplace. But, when Zara hurt her knee at the beginning of October, she decided to see a private consultant.
She told Graziano she’d been diagnosed with a medial collateral ligament (MCL) strain and that the consultant said ‘if you did anything really bad you wouldn’t have danced last night’.
Throughout the next three weeks Graziano urged her to take care of her knee.
Then, not long before Strictly’s final show — the December 16 Christmas special — a scan revealed she had ‘two torn muscles’ and a stress fracture of the tibia.
She told Graziano she was going to have an operation ‘after the finale because I want to do the [celebrity group] dance’, making nonsense of claims from friends of Zara that it was Graziano who told her to push through the pain.
‘She always wanted to practise,’ says Graziano. ‘I took on board her desire to go forward and improve. Her knee injury was not my fault. That’s why I’m telling you they put me under the bus.’
No wonder, then, the level of his agitation.
‘Every morning I was waking up scared. I’d be shaking. How can a person be scared because of what might be on social media or in the news? I hadn’t killed anybody.
‘I don’t understand how social media and unnamed sources can destroy someone’s life when the facts are the opposite. How can anyone invent this stuff? I’m not a monster. I’m not an abusive man.’
The Daily Mail approached Zara McDermott for comment.
Graziano has never had the opportunity to defend himself. As he tells his story for the first time you glimpse the positive, go-getting man he always was.
‘My story is for everyone whose life is threatened by social media pile-ons and unnamed sources. I’m a person who made sacrifices for his dream to dance but I never sacrificed another human being.
‘Anyone commenting on social media should realise I am a real person. I have feelings. I am vulnerable.
‘Right now, my reputation is zero and it will take a superhuman effort for me to get up from this hole. But I do believe the truth always wins in the end. I am determined not to let my and my family’s lives be destroyed.
‘I will dance again. I will bring joy to people again with my dancing because this is who I am: an international professional dancer, a man of integrity, a loving husband and son who has never forgotten where he’s come from.
‘I will not let these lies define me. They are not who I am.’