Strictly hosts shoot down huge rumour about new series, insisting ‘that’s not happening’

STRICTLY Come Dancing’s new hosts have finally revealed how the revamped show will work.

Emma Willis, 50, Josh Widdicombe, 43, and Johannes Radebe, 39, will take over from Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman when the BBC ballroom returns later this month, becoming the first trio to front the show.

Now they’ve set the record straight on Johannes’ rumoured ‘roving reporter’ role and lifted the lid on the “terrifying” secret auditions that landed them the biggest job on Saturday night television.

Speaking on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast, in an episode that will be released on Thursday, the trio also admitted their exact roles are still being shaped with just days to go before the new series starts.

“There’s no like-for-like, so no one’s replacing anybody,” Emma explained. “At the minute, it’s all very open. We’re having lots of production days where we go in, and we play around and we’re feeling each other out – well, they’re feeling us out, really.”

Comedian Josh added that the arrangement would be like “total football“, referring to the match tactic in which players switch between roles rather than sticking to fixed positions.

Most read in Showbiz

SYD SCORES

Sydney Sweeney shows off her ball skills as she drops sexiest naked shoot EVER

SINKING FEELING

Hollywood icon’s LA mansion plummets into huge sinkhole in terrifying pics

VOICE BROKEN

Truth behind Tom Jones’ Voice sacking… 11th-hour calls & ruthless Cheryl deal

LICENCE TO SPILL

Bond writer ‘confirms’ new 007 HAS been cast – as top actor lets slip name

The presenters also revealed the extraordinary lengths BBC bosses went to while secretly testing potential replacements for Tess and Claudia.

The recruitment process lasted around four months, with Emma describing the chemistry tests as “the most cloak-and-dagger thing I’ve ever, ever been a part of”.

She said: “The fact that there was a chemistry test, I mean, it’s been a long time since I’ve even seen, heard or been in a chemistry test. And it was terrifying.

“But honestly, [it was] brilliant. Why don’t they just do them more?”

Candidates were told when their screen tests would take place – but not where they were being taken or who they would be paired with.

Emma explained: “All we knew was the day that we were going and the time that we had to be there, and that the car would come and pick us up. We had no idea of the location.”

The secrecy even extended to their drivers, who were apparently told the stars were being taken to work on a made-up gardening programme called The Great Garden Glow Up.

Once they arrived, the prospective hosts found a miniature mock-up of the Strictly studio before being paired with different potential co-hosts, without knowing who was about to walk through the door.

And the eventual three-person line-up was not initially presented to them as the settled plan.

After separate chemistry tests, Josh and Johannes were paired together before producers raised the possibility of adding Emma.

Recalling the moment, Johannes said: “They came in to explain to us that there’s a wild card; they are thinking of bringing the three of us in.”

Emma said that when all three were eventually tested together, producers told them: “This is the last one, and this is a wild card. We’re just like, what happens if we do three?”

She added: “It’s so much of a wild card, we don’t really have a script for you either.”

The trio then helped adapt the material themselves, taking turns in different positions around the mock set so producers could see how each combination worked.

Josh admitted he was so unsure whether the experiment would lead anywhere that he suggested taking a photo to remember the moment.

He said: “We have to document this, because if it happens, who’d have thought it? If it doesn’t happen, at least we’ve got an image.”

They then endured another two weeks before discovering whether they had landed the jobs – a wait Johannes described as “gruelling”.

Josh was on tour in Birmingham when he was asked to join a Zoom call and went searching for somewhere quiet.

“I was sat in a graveyard in Birmingham,” he revealed, before later clarifying: “I wasn’t sat on a grave.”

Emma, meanwhile, was at the hairdressers when she was summoned to the same call.

She said she refused to get her hopes up, explaining: “I was like, this could be an either-way Zoom, so I’m not going to get excited.”

With nowhere private to go, she ended up taking the call in the salon toilet. “I was sat on a toilet at the hairdressers,” she said, before making clear: “I wasn’t using it. I put the lid down and I was sat on it.”

Johannes said he was at home preparing to perform as Lola in Kinky Boots in the West End when he received the message.

“I was in my apartment, getting ready to go to the [London] Coliseum as I was performing that night in front of 2,300 people,” he added. “It was lovely because I could scream without any interference.”

The secrecy continued even after the trio had been told they had landed the jobs.

Johannes said he “hated having to lie” when friends asked whether rumours were true, recalling how his former Strictly partner, tennis star Annabel Croft, 60, confronted him after hearing he was in contention.

“I remember her calling, saying, ‘Is this true? Because if it is…’ I said, ‘No, it’s not’,” he recalled. “And that day was the day of the chemistry test. I hated the whole process. I’m not going to lie.”Emma said she told only her husband, Busted star Matt Willis, while Josh first confided in his wife, interior designer Rose Hanson.

Emma was so determined not to be responsible for a leak that she even refused to tell her own agent who her co-hosts were.