EastEnders star Balvinder Sopal has sadly found herself as this year's Strictly Come Dancing contestant who keeps landing in the bottom two, surviving her third dreaded dance-off on the weekend just gone (making her the equivalent of lip-sync assassin from RuPaul's Drag Race).
When the actor and professional partner Julian Caillon were confirmed to be dancing again, opposite Ellie Goldstein and Vito Coppola, on Sunday's results show, she very visibly and audibly started laughing.
Was it out of frustration, or did she genuinely find it amusing? Well, she cleared things up on tonight's episode of It Takes Two.
Talking to host Fleur East, Balvinder started laughing again and said: "D'you know what? There was a part of me that was just expecting it. When our names were not called out until the very last beat I was like, 'We're going again.'
"But I didn't mind because I actually loved the dance."
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Julian added that they spoke beforehand and he said that was "really calm" as they felt really confident in that week's dance (a Rumba to Shakespeare's Sister classic 'Stay').
"Either we make it through straightaway, fantastic, or we go again, and to be fair if we had to go again, we worked so hard on it," he said.
Fleur then read a message from a fan who claimed the couple were being "underscored" and asked how it feels to have the judges say Balvinder is improving, but not have it reflected in the scoring (the duo have scored 28 points for the last weeks).
"I'm trying to get my head around it, because surely — there's a part of me that goes, 'if you can see improvement that warrants a little of a better score than we got last week'. So I don't really know where the judges sit and what exactly they're looking for.
"At this point, I'm a little bit confused. And I'm just gonna out, week on week, for however long I'm here, and just dance to my heart's content, because that's all I've got control of. There's nothing else than I can do, and certainly with the Rumba, it was the hardest thing to learn.
"Literally on Tuesday, I'd thrown the towel in and went 'I can't do it'. I sat in the corner and cried. Jules was like, 'When you're ready, pro.'"
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Looking ahead to this weekend, the duo are performing a Couple's Choice to 'Sapphire' by Ed Sheeran and Arijit Singh.
Teasing a little bit about what we expect, Balvinder said she was "really excited", partly because she'll be dancing barefoot and will be a contemporary yet "earthy" mix of bhangra and Bollywood.
"It's strong, it's powerful with some really nuanced softer moves that just go through the dance. I think it's gonna be vibrant and banging."
She concluded that Julian might be a "secret Punjabi" as he was surprisingly very good at the moves, which have been choreographed by Prabhleen Oberoi.
"He's doing the moves better than I am!" she joked. "My man's got it down to a tee – sure you can dance, but you can dance Punjabi-style!"
Strictly Come Dancing airs on Saturdays on BBC One, while spin-off Strictly: It Takes Two airs on weeknights on BBC Two. Both shows are available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.
