Lisa Riley says she was an “emotional wreck” behind the scenes of Strictly Come Dancing, but her dance partner Robin Windsor was her “ultimate rock”.
The 47-year-old Emmerdale star, who plays Mandy Dingle in the ITV soap, lost her mum Cath shortly before she became a contestant on the BBC show. But she decided to keep it a secret from everybody so that viewers didn’t vote for her out of pity.
However, it seems Strictly bosses knew about her family loss, and so did former show pro Robin. And he was there for her when she had to stop rehearsals to ‘cry her eyes out’.
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She told Daily Star: “Robin, my beautiful dance partner, he knew. There were moments where I had to just stop and literally be an emotional wreck, crying my eyes out. Robin did not only teach me how to dance, he was my ultimate rock when I was just crumpling hour after hour.
(Image: BBC/Ray Burmiston)
“I kept smiling, I kept dancing because I kept thinking ‘my mum’s on the front row, my mum’s watching me, my mum would want me to win this and be covered in glitter with big wigs and sparkly costumes’. What better way to go through your agony?”
The soap star admitted things got too tough at one point during the series that she considered quitting. It was a “horrendous” week that left her “broken”.
She made a mistake during a double dance week which saw contestants merge two formats within one routine. Lisa and Robin had the Cha Cha and the Tango, aptly named the Cha Chango.
She said: “Genuinely, I was just really, really broken. I wasn’t sleeping very well at all at the time. And then I made a big mistake live which I’d never done. We’d done that routine over and over and I was foot-perfect.
“Then, when we did the costume reveal, the rip-off of the skirt, I went on the wrong foot and I think that was mother nature saying ‘Lisa, you’re taking a lot on’. That week was horrendous and I remember once we’d filmed the show live. I remember that night I was like ‘I’m done, I’m done’. Obviously I still carried on, but that was really, really tough.”
Lisa is a Celebrity Ambassador for Sue Ryder’s A Sense of Grief campaign. The campaign was launched to raise awareness of the huge impact our senses have on the grieving process.
She said: “I often have sensory memories of my wonderful mum which can trigger feelings of grief and Sue Ryder’s research shows that this is far from uncommon in the bereavement process. I want to encourage people caught in these moments to be able to talk about them and acknowledge how tough they can be. I hope that this campaign will not only help those who are grieving, but also provide a framework of understanding for those who are supporting the bereaved.”
Lisa, who lost her mum Cath in 2012, says there are multiple sensory triggers that remind her of her mum. She said: “My mum used to make me veggie toad in the hole, but she’d often burn it. She’d always say, ‘if you ate normal sausages, I wouldn’t burn them!’”
Another is the colour yellow. “My mum always wore yellow, and she had a yellow aura which is associated with happy and sociable people. Everyone at her funeral wore yellow, hankies, ties, fascinators – whenever I see it, I think of her and feel her with me.”
Lisa Riley is supporting Sue Ryder’s new campaign, A Sense of Grief. To find out more, please visit sueryder.org/senses.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
