Why Emma Willis is the perfect star to steer Strictly into a new era
Can Emma Willis save Strictly Come Dancing? BBC bosses will be hoping that the answer to this question is a resounding “yes”, after revealing that the 50-year-old presenter is set to step into Tess Daly’s sparkly heels as one of the three new hosts of the dance competition, alongside comedian Josh Widdicombe and pro dancer Johannes Radebe.
It’s undoubtedly one of the biggest jobs in British television, and some of broadcasting’s most familiar faces were rumoured to be in contention, including The One Show’s Alex Jones, Rylan Clark, and his fellow former It Takes Two host Zoe Ball, who has admitted that she has “worked through seven stages of grief” after failing to secure the gig.
But even in the face of this rejection, Ball was quick to provide praise for the woman who pipped her to the (diamanté-encrusted) post. “If who I think has got it, we’re in safe hands and our new hosts are going to be fabulous,” she said – pretty good proof that MTV host-turned-reality TV failsafe Willis is a very hard woman to dislike.
It took the Beeb months to decide on Daly and Claudia Winkleman’s replacements, after the beloved duo announced their departure last October, and all the contenders have reportedly been put through their paces: reports suggested that Willis and her fellow candidates had to face off against one another in chemistry tests and full dress rehearsals, complete with a live band and a judging panel.
It is no wonder that the show’s producers have gone all out to fill these vacancies – they really needed to get this decision right. The stakes are even higher after Strictly has weathered a series of scandals in recent years, from bullying rows to controversial celebrity castings, all of which threatened to dull its mega-watt glow.
So what is it about Willis that has made Strictly’s top team sit up and take note, in favour of a perhaps more predictable choice? She is certainly, as Ball has implied, a safe pair of hands when it comes to hosting TV juggernauts, and makes grappling with the many moving parts of a live show look remarkably easy.
And while Daly’s Strictly delivery could sometimes veer into feeling a bit staid and over-polished, Willis has proven again and again that she can strike up an easy rapport with interviewees and viewers alike – perhaps because she’s not afraid to be vulnerable on screen, and to show a dash of grit. “I’m not putting on a facade,” she told The Independent’s Jacob Stolworthy in 2024.
Willis, born Emma Griffiths in 1976, didn’t always think she was cut out for the spotlight. Growing up in Sutton Coldfield in Birmingham – she still has a soft accent – she was “quiet, very shy” and “not a popular kid” at her comprehensive. When she was 16, a family friend suggested that she should try out modelling, although Willis, with some signature self-deprecation, has said that “you would never have picked me out as someone with potential”.
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Clearly someone did – her striking, editorial-friendly looks meant that she ended up spending the best part of a decade as a model, working for brands like Chanel and Gap and shooting for magazines like Vogue and Elle. Then TV came calling, and she landed a job as an MTV presenter. “I thought, ‘I’ll enjoy it while it lasts – and I’m sure it’s not going to last very long,’” she recalled to The Telegraph.
Helming chaotic MTV segments like the UK edition of Total Request Live certainly provided a crash course in live TV. And the job would eventually prove important for more than purely professional reasons too – it was while working here that the presenter met her future husband, Busted’s Matt Willis (“I’d see him wearing baggy jeans, waddling around like a duck so they didn’t fall down,” she told Cosmopolitan years later).
In a strange twist of fate, before they started dating, Emma ended up serving as a bridesmaid in a wedding-themed sketch to mark the release of Busted’s single “Crashed the Wedding”, in which Matt “married” a fan. A few years later, in 2008, they tied the knot for real at Rushton Hall in Northamptonshire.
Her first foray into the TV mainstream came when she appeared as a guest presenter on Big Brother spin-off show Big Brother’s Big Mouth. A proper fan of the original reality giant, she proved to be such a good fit that she ended up staying with the spin-off through its various incarnations, including when the franchise jumped from Channel 4 to Channel 5.
And when a vacancy came up in 2013 for the host of the main show, there was no one better placed than Willis to take it, following in the footsteps of one of Britain’s most successful presenters, Davina McCall. Big Brother, Willis has said, gave her a career-changing confidence boost. “I’ll never forget the first time I hosted the main show,” she told The Telegraph. “It was terrifying and exciting, but it was also the most comfortable I’ve ever felt on live TV, as I knew the subject inside-out. It was the job where I shook off most of my insecurities and really felt, ‘I deserve to be here.’”
It wasn’t necessarily a fluffy gig. As the celebrity edition of the Channel 5 iteration seemed to attract increasing controversy, Willis was the one charged with taking contestants to task over their behaviour, and had to interview actor Roxanne Pallett after the show’s “punchgate” row in 2018; she was praised for the way she handled the grilling, refusing to give softball questions and probing some of the ex-Emmerdale star’s vague responses.
During her Big Brother years, her ubiquity seemed to snowball. She replaced Holly Willoughby as a host on Saturday night singing competition The Voice in 2014, and went on to present big events like the Brit Awards and the BBC’s Comic Relief telethon, before taking over as the host of Channel 4’s big reality gambit The Circle – billed as a social experiment to take on Big Brother’s mantle – in 2019.
But Willis’s career hasn’t been all bright lights and glamour. In 2018, she made the surprising decision to train as a maternity care assistant, the same job that her mother had when she was growing up. She documented the process in Emma Willis: Delivering Babies – and didn’t swan in expecting special treatment.
She ended up working four shifts a week over the course of three months, eventually becoming fully qualified. “We had to do it properly, which meant doing the same hours as all other maternity care assistants in the hospital,” she explained. “So I completely cleared my diary for those 12 weeks.”
And her ability to open up on camera – rather than just being the one asking the questions – is certainly a quality that has endeared her to viewers, and earned their respect too.
In 2023, she played a crucial – and genuinely heartbreaking – role in her husband’s BBC documentary Matt Willis: Fighting Addiction, in which the musician was bracingly honest about his struggles with drugs and alcohol, his experiences with rehab and relapse. Emma, meanwhile, opened up about the strain that his addictions had placed on their relationship and on their family life (the couple share three young children), at one point breaking down in tears as she discussed her fears of losing her husband. She was praised for her honesty and her resilience – and her willingness to take viewers behind the veneer of showbiz only endeared her to a new cohort of fans.
This authenticity should stand her in good stead for Strictly, a show that, for all the fake tans and imitation jewels, is at its best when viewers feel like they are being taken on a genuine emotional journey. And perhaps she just wants to do another show that her children can enjoy (which was a factor in her taking The Voice gig). “There are very few shows I do that I can sit and watch with my kids,” she previously told The Independent. “I certainly couldn’t do that with Big Brother.”
When Willis enters the ballroom for the first time in September, the nation’s eyes will be on her – but it seems that she is well placed to brush off any backlash. After all, she has some serious mettle and has got through much worse. “I’m finally in my f*** it phase,” she has said. “I’d heard about it and wanted it so badly because I’m a chronic people-pleaser, but I’m living it and it’s wonderful.”
