Saturday night’s episode of Strictly Come Dancing marked a major milestone for this season. Love Island star Tasha Ghouri, who is paired up with professional dancer Aljaz Skorjanec, received the first “10” score of the 2024 competition, clocking up a near-perfect total of 39 for her Coachella-themed, selfie stick-waving Charleston, a seriously impressive feat just four weeks into the live shows. And yet this victorious moment has been overshadowed by two brief interactions that took place away from the dance floor – and they were so fleeting that you might well have missed them the first time around. The storm of conjecture they have prompted is perhaps the first sign that Strictly’s post-scandal era will prove very tricky indeed to navigate.
Towards the end of the show, the celebrities and their professional partners gathered in the “Clauditorium” – the upstairs area where host Claudia Winkleman chats to the contestants in between performances – before the voting lines opened, just as they do every week. This time, though, dancer Katya Jones was captured on camera as she appeared to move opera singer Wynne Evans’s hand off her midriff and onto her hip. Earlier in the programme, she seemed to reject a high five from her partner. Seeing these two incidents in quick succession moved viewers to start speculating about whether Jones was feeling uneasy. Social media was soon awash with comments from Strictly fans: “Something is off,” one Twitter/X viewer claimed, while others described the interaction as “uncomfortable”.
The pair quickly moved to shut down the rumour mill, sharing an Instagram video in which they said they were “just messing around”. In his post, Evans wrote the high fives were a “running joke” between them. Jones, a Strictly veteran of eight years, later doubled down with another video on Sunday, describing the row as “quite absurd” and asking fans to focus their attention on Evans’s “amazing” progress in the competition. “Even the idea that it made me feel uncomfortable or offended me in any way is complete nonsense,” she said. And this morning, Evans discussed the matter on his BBC Radio Wales show, revealing he had been left “heartbroken by the things that have been written about [him]” and again referring to the moment as “a stupid joke that went wrong”, one which “has been totally misinterpreted”. Reports have suggested that the show’s welfare team have checked in on the pair, and no further action is planned.
In the wake of the backstage drama that has gripped Strictly this year, it seems inevitable that viewers will be on high alert for any whisper of behind-the-scenes strife, real or imagined. Last month, the BBC published the results of its probe into past contestant Amanda Abbington’s complaints levelled at former pro Giovanni Pernice. The corporation upheld complaints relating to verbal bullying and harassment, but found that Pernice had not been physically aggressive, and also issued an apology to Abbington. Before that, over the summer, dancer Graziano Di Prima left Strictly, later admitting to having kicked his celebrity partner Zara McDermott during a rehearsal.
Although the long-running investigation may have wrapped up, it has cast a definite shadow over the usually sparkling proceedings. This shadow has proved hard to shake off, despite the fact that Strictly seems to have adopted a business-as-usual approach (the row hasn’t yet been alluded to on the show, although chaperones are now present during dance rehearsals and welfare protocols have been bolstered). Against this backdrop, it’s hardly surprising that fans are perhaps reading into any unusual on-screen interactions more closely than they might have done a few years ago: right now, everything that happens on air is being viewed through the prism of past scandals.
Perhaps because we didn’t see the tension brewing last season before it exploded into the press, we’ve become obsessed with sleuthing on any purported signs of discontent. In the wake of controversy, this 20th anniversary season of Strictly was always going to be a difficult one for the show, for precisely this reason: both the media and the fans are more highly attuned to any potential cracks in the glittering facade. Whereas once we might have scrutinised each dance pairing for any proof of explosive romantic chemistry that could lead to a “Strictly curse” scenario – look at that eye contact during the Argentine Tango! – our new default is to search for discord instead.
As the competition rolls on and fans remain hyper-vigilant, contestants, pros and the show’s bosses will need to be braced for more scrutiny, and be ready to carefully manage any possible fallout. The way we watch Strictly, it seems, has changed – and it will probably take more than a few smiling reassurances to build back viewers’ trust.