Dani Dyer has opened up for the first time about her Strictly exit.
Last week, the former Love Island winner announced that she has had to withdraw from Strictly Come Dancing, after fracturing her ankle in rehearsals. Dani was scheduled to compete with professional dancer Nikita Kuzmin.
Now, for the first time since sustaining her injury, Dani has spoken out about her devastation.
Speaking on her Live and Let Dyers podcast with her father, actor Danny Dyer, the 29-year-old confessed that she has been “laying and crying a lot”.
“I’d known about Strictly since May, literally just before [my] wedding. I had my Zoom and stuff with them, and you never know if you’re going to get the gig or not. Strictly is one of the biggest jobs ever on TV and it’s such a privilege to do it,” she admitted.
“I couldn’t even really enjoy [watching the pre-recorded] launch show because I was thinking, ‘I don’t even know if I’m going to be there,’” she detailed, before explaining how she injured herself.
“I fell and rolled my ankle. Initially, I heard a noise but I was like, ‘I think it will be fine.’ I come home on the weekend and iced it all, and when they sent me for the MRI, it came back that there was a hairline fracture on my ankle,” she recalled, describing the pain as “achy, like a headache in my foot.”
“The doctor said to me, if I continue dancing on this foot, it’s not going to heal. It’s just going to get worse and worse, and then we will have to medically withdraw you. For the first two to three weeks, you can’t wear any heels, I’d have to change my dance completely,” she noted.
“Welfare rung me, and she was like, ‘Dani, I’m really sorry. You can’t compete, you’ve got a fracture,’ and I was like, ‘What?’. I rung Nikita, and Nikita didn’t speak for, like, two minutes. He was just in complete shock. We were all just so devastated about it,” Dani shared.
Praising her replacement Amber Davies, Dani added: “They’re going to be amazing together. I’m glad that Nikita has actually got a partner, because there was a chance that he wouldn’t get a partner because it was such a quick turnaround. I wish everyone the best.”
Danny then asked his daughter if she hopes to return to Strictly in the future.
“I would absolutely love to go back. It’s a year away, but my door is open. If they want their door to be open, then I’ll walk through their door,” Dani teased.
