Rachel Riley thinks Strictly Come Dancing is more terrifying than SHARK! Celebrity Infested Waters
Rachel Riley thinks swimming with sharks in SHARK! Celebrity Infested Waters is not as scary as when she did Strictly Come Dancing in 2013.
Rachel Riley thinks Strictly Come Dancing is scarier than SHARK! Celebrity Infested Waters.
The 39-year-old maths expert could take her time in confronting her fear of sharks and the ocean in the Bahamas-based ITV1 reality show, but Rachel had to immediately be chucked into the deep end when she and her professional dance partner Pasha Kovalev, 45, did their routines in the hit BBC One Latin and ballroom dance programme in 2013.
The star - who dated Pasha in 2014 before they got married in Las Vegas in 2019 - told the Metro newspaper's 60 Seconds column: "If you asked me tomorrow to go swimming with great whites [sharks], I'd be there.
"If you asked me to do Strictly again, no way.
"The thing about Strictly is the music comes on and you panic, whereas with the sharks you can take your time.
"Rationally, you should be more scared of something that can eat you than dancing on telly.
"But we're not always rational, are we?"
Countdown star Rachel, comedian Sir Lenny Henry, 66, Amandaland's Lucy Punch, 47, Call the Midwife actress Helen George, 41, McFly bassist Dougie Poynter, 37, comedian Ross Noble, 49, and Paralympian-and-TV presenter Ade Adepitan, 52, form the line-up for SHARK! Celebrity Infested Waters.
They jetted out to the Bahamas, in the Caribbean, to embark on an adrenaline-fueled journey in the shark capital of the world to conquer their phobia of the aquatic beasts and the ocean.
Since SHARK! Celebrity Infested Waters began airing on July 14, the group - who are accompanied by experts - lowered themselves into cages in a dock where bull sharks are a common sight, a lemon shark sank its teeth into Ross' leg, and the group was in the open water as Caribbean reef sharks swam around them.
The six celebrities are building up to dive with tiger sharks - the second biggest predatory shark species.
And Rachel - who has daughters Maven, five, Noa, three, with Pasha - wrote a will before she went out to Bimini, the westernmost island in the Bahamas, to film the show - which coincides with the 50th anniversary of Steven Spielberg's original Jaws film.
She explained: "As soon as you have babies, you're supposed to have a will, so this was the proper impetus.
"Right at the start they told us we were building up to dive with tiger sharks, which have been found with whole suits of armour in their stomachs.
"There had been a fatality in the area [the Bahamas] from tiger sharks in the past year, so even though you've got all the precautions, they're still wild sharks."
