Of course, there was the small matter of the tour to get through, which wasn’t a problem now as by that time the press had given up on any John Sergeant stories and I was being left well alone. That is, until a professional dancer the press liked to dub ‘the Italian Stallion’ started getting friendly…
CHAPTER 17
The biggest mistake
The 2009 tour was hard. I was still the new girl and I was still trying to find my place on a show that was well established. Obviously I had been through the mill in the media too with the whole John Sergeant episode, and I remember just feeling so desperate to fit in on the tour: I wanted to be part of the group.
They were all nice and welcoming but most of them were in couples so to speak, either married or with partners, and the only two single people drifting around were Vincent Simone and me. He was very friendly and invited me to lunch several times as he seemed to want company. Whenever we went out to eat, though, all he talked about was how heartbroken he was over his ex-girlfriend Flavia Cacace, who had split up with him for her celebrity dance partner, the EastEnders actor Matt Di Angelo. At that stage, he just needed a friend to talk to, someone to open up to, and I was happy to listen to him. He seemed very broken inside and needed a friend. And I was craving someone’s consideration too, just to feel I wasn’t alone.
Yes, it was a mistake but he was very charming and he was paying me a lot of attention. I wanted someone to share my stories with and to talk to. Those desperate feelings of wanting to belong overshadowed any sort of common sense that I might have had about the situation. In my defence, he acted like a single guy and totally dismissed that he was in any sort of relationship or that he had anyone in his life. He never said he had a girlfriend; he said there was a girl who was very much in love with him and that it was complicated. I couldn’t really understand why he kept saying that; I think at the time I thought it was ‘complicated’ because he still had feelings for Flavia. Of course now I feel it was stupid of me to fall for it all, but I did.
Whenever we would go out as a big group after a show I would spot this girl sitting by herself, never trying to be with Vincent. And he was always at the bar, chatting up other girls. To me that didn’t look like a relationship – in my mind he was acting like a single man and I didn’t have any reason not to trust him. I was very vulnerable at that time and when you are on tour with the same people, day in and day out, it’s a surreal world. It makes you think you are very close to people and I did feel like I was bonding with Vincent. I didn’t think anyone could lie so blatantly, or maybe he did believe the things he said, I don’t know. Anyway, he gave me a couple of gifts and gave me the attention I was craving so it wasn’t hard for me to give in to it. But it was just the most ridiculous thing to do and I feel so very embarrassed by it.
On the last day of the tour he asked me to come into his room. I was due to fly back to LA the very next day to see my mum and I thought we were going to talk about what would happen with the relationship now the tour was ending, but I could not have been more wrong. He simply said: ‘The girl that I told you about, she is my girlfriend and I can’t leave her now because she is pregnant.’
I felt absolutely sick to my stomach; my legs almost gave way, they were shaking so much. At first I thought someone was playing a cruel joke on me – this could not be happening, it must be untrue. I asked him if he had just found out about her pregnancy and he was honest enough to say ‘no’ and that she was ‘four months pregnant’.
I can’t describe how I felt – I just knew how revolting the whole situation was.
I vaguely remember him then saying to me that he was still going to try and finish with her but it is a bit of a blur, to be honest, and I don’t remember what I said to him. I was so upset, so angry and sad, and I just felt completely used. It was a real mess and I didn’t think anything like that would ever happen to me but in a sense at least it was between us and I could fly back to LA and get away from it all. But that wasn’t to be the end of it: his girlfriend took her story to the press and the whole situation became much, much worse. I went back to LA and started receiving some very angry messages from them both. I’m ashamed to say I sent back a lot of angry ones, too – more in a defensive way, but that is no excuse.
If Vincent had been any sort of man about this, he would have stood up and taken responsibility for the whole mess. All he had to do was say, ‘Yes, this is my fault.’ But he never did and the whole situation got so aggravated when she took her story to the press.
It was disgusting, it was very hard to read, and I was in the States seeing it all on the internet. I remember reading that they had separated for a while and she left him – I didn’t blame her. I was so angry with him but I think I was angrier with myself for trusting someone so easily. I was fooling myself thinking that he really cared because he was always taking me out to lunch and dinner and giving me presents and paying me a lot of attention. If I could go back in time and change it, I would. I cannot explain how disgusted I felt with myself.
If I’m honest, I did think that maybe I should just forget Strictly altogether and stay in America but at the same time I was scared not to have a steady job as I still felt the responsibility of supporting my family, the desire to help my mum. Working was still a driving force in me and my aunt persuaded me to accept the job. The producer told me they didn’t care about all the media attention I had been getting. She said she knew what the press was like but the important thing was that they wanted me on the next series. ‘We know you are an amazing dancer and we want you back on the show,’ she reassured me. ‘You have to think about the job you are doing. The press is the press, it will always be there and you won’t be able to do anything about it but you just have to move forward. We want you back as we think you’re really good as a performer and a choreographer and we don’t want to see you waste your talent.’
And that made me feel better. I was also offered a massive pay-deal to tell my side of the story to the News of the World.
I was supposed to show all the text messages and emails from Vincent’s girlfriend and Vincent that they had sent me. In them I was verbally abused and called lots of horrible names and yes, I reacted badly and I was saying horrible things back, which was so stupid. But I had had enough and I thought, ‘You know what? I want to tell my side of the story.’ I was offered a lot of money and this was my chance to say everything I needed to say. So it was all arranged and the morning of the interview I woke up, went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror… and that is when I realised, I just couldn’t do it. What good would ever come of it? I would just be in the same category as all the people who go to the press and sell their kiss-and-tell stories and I would degrade myself even more. And then I would be at a point of no return. If I sold my story and put all those text messages out for the public to see, what good would it do? And I would always have the feeling that I sold a bit of myself to a tabloid newspaper.
So I decided not to do it and it did not go down at all well with the newspaper. I was harassed and they tried to persuade me to still do the story by bullying me to a certain degree. They told me that if I didn’t tell the story they would write other things about me but that was a risk I was willing to take. I didn’t want to sell this story any more and I was prepared for whatever they were going to do. Sure enough, they did pay me back a few years later.
It is funny how life works, though. The same day I turned down the newspaper deal and spent all morning and afternoon crying and feeling sorry for myself, I got a phone call from Brian Fortuna in the evening. He told me he had just started working on a new BBC3 show, Dancing on Wheels, which was a one-off six-episode series about ballroom dancing for wheelchair users commissioned for Disability Month. ‘Kris, I really need your help. It’s going to be a lot of work and I really need help in teaching these guys,’ he said. Brian had quite a lot of knowledge of wheelchair dancing as his parents had set up a dance school in LA for wheelchair-users. I was quite fl
attered that he asked me to help him.
At first I said no, I felt like I was in such a bad place. I didn’t feel like going somewhere and being filmed and I didn’t think I would be any help either.
‘Kris, just do one day! Come and do one day with me and if you don’t like it, don’t sign the contract,’ said Brian.
So I did and I went to Brunel University, where the whole thing was being filmed. When I walked in I saw a young guy in a wheelchair, who was paralysed from the waist down. His name was Harry and he was twenty-four years old and he was such a nice guy. He was waiting to meet his celebrity and I just choked. I just looked at him and it seemed so unfair for someone so young and sweet to be sitting there in a wheelchair. I turned to Brian and just said, ‘I’m really sorry but I just don’t think I can do it, I just don’t think I am strong enough to do it.’
And he said to me, ‘Kris, these people don’t need your pity, they just need your help with dancing. They are so excited and you can help them with that, you can be part of this experience with them. Don’t you want to be that person?’
And well, how could I say no? In fact I fell in love with the project – I was so involved with everyone we worked with and they were all such amazing people. It was six weeks of filming and rehearsing throughout June and the first two weeks of July in 2009 and I got paid hardly anything for it but the experience and the people… They gave me something more than an income: in a sense they put me back together again and very quickly I realised that I had no problems in my life, I had nothing to be upset about at all. For me it put such a massive perspective on things as at the end of the day, I can get up in the morning and walk and dance and do what I love for a living.
I loved that project, it was a very special experience and I was so pleased to be part of it. It was a blessing in disguise and I was very proud watching them all perform. And funnily enough, the winner of the series was a certain Caroline Flack! I worked with her and trained her throughout the show and she won the series with her partner James, who was a double amputee. Of course, it wasn’t going to be her last victory on a dancing show…
After the series finished, I thought to myself, ‘OK, we all mess up, we all make mistakes. I need to stop feeling sorry for myself now and just get on with things – there is so much more to life. At the end of the day, I love what I do and it is a job that always makes me happy and can make a world of difference to people I work with, like the guys in the wheelchairs.’ I felt useful again and I decided that my passion and my talent for dancing were all that mattered.
The show had been a healing process but I felt I needed to have closure on the whole situation with Vincent. And when I say closure, I felt that I wasn’t ever going to be able to put it behind me properly until I had spoken to his girlfriend and apologised. Vincent had played us both: we were both lied to and we were both really upset at the time and there was a lot of anger, too. I didn’t need to have anything to do with him any more but I knew in my heart that I wanted to apologise to her. It took a few years for me to feel brave enough to pick up the phone but I wanted to say sorry to her, in a sense I felt I needed to explain myself and it was such an important conversation for me to have. I knew her life had been made miserable as mine was miserable too, but I wanted her to know that I was embarrassed and ashamed about the whole situation. It was really good to speak to her and when that conversation took place I was so relieved. I cried a lot and she understood that I was speaking from my heart. She was very gracious and it meant a lot to me that we were able to talk and to have that closure.
I will never forgive Vincent for what he did to me and what damage he did to my reputation. I know he did try a couple of times to speak to me through Robin Windsor, who went on to become my partner. He would tell Robin that he was sad that we couldn’t even say hello to each other. But we don’t, and I will never forgive him.
CHAPTER 18
A Welsh dragon and a Siberian siren
In the last two weeks of July 2009 I went back to LA to spend time with my mum before the next series of Strictly training began. She was happy that I had taken the job again but she did say that I really needed to decide where I wanted to settle – living in between two countries wasn’t really ideal!
So as Strictly Come Dancing could now lead on to other things, I decided I needed to have my base in London and close the door on my life in America. Mum was going back to her flat and my aunt in Russia and I felt that there would be more opportunities for me in the UK. By then I had rented a one-bed apartment in Bayswater for a year and was ready to get my teeth into a new series, into a new project. The day before I was due to fly back to London, I had convinced myself that the producers were going to give me a celebrity who was so completely under the radar that I couldn’t be the subject of any more press or sensational stories and instead, I could just focus on teaching and dancing.
I got a text from one of the producers, who told me that the morning after I arrived, I would have to meet the film crew at the BBC Studios and that I would then be taken to a place called Wales. I had never been to Wales and to be honest, I didn’t really know where it was or anything!
So I called my agent: ‘The BBC are sending me to Wales! Do you know why? Do you know who I am going to be partnered with?’
He said that there was a list of celebrities that the newspapers were speculating were going to take part and so far the only person who might have the Welsh connection was a boxer called Joe Calzaghe. He had just retired from boxing and so the papers were speculating that he was a possibility for the new series of the show. And my heart just sank. I had a good friend who appeared on Dancing with the Stars, who was partnered with a boxer, Floyd Mayweather, Jr. She had told me that they had a very difficult relationship, he was hard to work with and their personalities just didn’t click at all. I thought to myself, ‘This is going to be awful if my celebrity partner is a boxer like him!’
So I googled Joe as I had absolutely no idea about the world of boxing or who he was and what he had achieved. And the more I read, the more I convinced myself that this guy was going to be such a big-headed, full-of-himself person as he seemed to have won just about every title there was in the boxing world. He was the World Champion, he was undefeated, he’d won this and he’d won that… and I just thought, ‘This is going to be a nightmare!’
So my journey to Wales with the BBC wasn’t exactly filled with a lot of excited anticipation. I was very nervous about meeting Joe and I was told by the film crew that the official ‘meeting’ was going to be pretty much like last year. I would walk into a room with a camera crew behind me and meet Joe. We arrived in Wales and went to some tiny village, where Joe was waiting to meet me. And when I walked into this hall and went over to him, he couldn’t even look me in the eye! He was so, so shy. I walked over to him to say hello and he shook my hand and just said, ‘Hi, I’m Joe, nice to meet you.’
And it was a bit awkward after that – we just didn’t know what to say to each other. The previous year John Sergeant did all the talking and so I expected the same really from Joe – he was the celebrity after all. But he was really shy and I guess I expected someone who was going to be very outgoing. And so I took charge and I said, ‘Right, let’s start learning some steps of the cha-cha-cha, which is going to be our first dance.’ I wanted to make it fun because it was being filmed for a VT slot to be played on the very first show but he was a little uncomfortable with the cameras and people watching him.
He didn’t like it at all and even though he was such a superstar in his field, this was so out of his comfort zone that he struggled a bit. We also had to do a couple of interview sessions afterwards and I remember saying to the cameras that I couldn’t believe how shy Joe was and that I hoped it wouldn’t change as I had heard such arrogant things about boxers!
The next day we had a full day of rehearsing and Joe brought along his whole family – his mum and dad and his two sisters plus a couple of his friends – to the session. They
were very supportive and we went for a meal afterwards to talk about the show and spend time together. I found out that his father was also a musician and that was weird – I hadn’t met anyone who had a dad similar to mine. We started laughing about how difficult these musical types can be and I must admit, Joe and I just clicked right away. He was much more outgoing with his family around him and we talked about his boxing and how his dad had trained him all his life.
All our dance training was to be done in Wales so I was staying in a hotel and meeting Joe at rehearsals every day. He took instructions very well and he wasn’t afraid to work hard and put in the hours and so we really started to enjoy working with each other. But about a week into rehearsals we started noticing the paparazzi taking an interest in us. They would suddenly appear if we had a break in rehearsals and went out to grab a bite for lunch or something and then we’d see them taking pictures of us walking back into rehearsals. I just couldn’t understand it. The penny dropped when I read the stories in the newspaper, speculating on what was going on between Joe and me. It was completely ridiculous as for one, we had only just met and two, whenever we went for lunch we had the film crew with us – not an ‘intimate lunch’ as the papers reported. By that time my understanding of the media was that this sort of story came with the territory of being on the show but Joe had always had quite an uneasy relationship with the press and hated this personal intrusion. He told me that when he was going through his divorce he had been given a really rough ride by the newspapers and was reported in a very negative light. He’s not naïve, he knew because of who he was he would be getting attention, but he couldn’t understand why such a private matter, like a marriage breaking up, had to be reported in such harsh detail.
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