Walford matriarch Suki Kaur Panesar<\/a> (now Unwin) on EastEnders since 2019. She said of the news: \u201cWorking on EastEnders and being a part of Strictly Come Dancing is the stuff that dreams are made of.\u201d <\/p>\nThe actor also revealed she has previous dance experience, saying: \u201cI dabbled a little bit, I did ballroom and Latin as a hobby and really loved it. When you’ve got a passion for something, you’re more inclined to enjoy it.”<\/p>\n
Clarke said he was preparing to \u201cfall over a fair bit\u201d, adding: \u201cNever thought I\u2019d say this\u2026 but I\u2019m doing Strictly! Honestly, I\u2019ve got no idea what I\u2019m doing but I\u2019m excited to get stuck in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dyer, the daughter of EastEnders actor Danny Dyer, rose to fame after winning Love Island in 2018. She said of her appointment: \u201cGetting the opportunity to be on Strictly is the second most amazing thing I\u2019ve done this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel very very blessed and cannot wait to get my dancing shoes on,\u201d the 28-year-old TV personality added.<\/p>\n
![\"\u2018Strictly](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Screenshot-2025-08-12-at-08-07-11.png\")
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\u2018Strictly Come D ancing\u2019 announces \u2018EastEnders\u2019 star Balvinder Sopal as fifth contestant for 2025 series (BBC)<\/p>\n
Actor Kingston, known for playing Elizabeth Corday in US medical drama ER and River Song in sci-fi show Doctor Who, said she was inspired to join the show after seeing her friend, Miranda actor Sarah Hadland, finish as a runner up on last year\u2019s series.<\/p>\n
Dutch football star Hasselbaink, who currently works alongside Gareth Southgate as assistant coach for the England football team, said the dancing competition will bring him \u201ctotally out of my comfort zone\u201d.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, 36-year-old Aikines-Aryeetey, known as Nitro to Gladiators fans, said: \u201cI’m so excited to be part of the Strictly family this series and I’m ready to give it all I’ve got.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\u2018Gladiators\u2019](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Screenshot-2025-08-11-at-09-31-55.png\")
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open image in gallery<\/p>\n
\u2018Gladiators\u2019 star and Olympic sprinter Harry Aikines-Aryeetey has also joined the \u2018Strictly\u2019 line-up (BBC)<\/p>\n
The athlete, a former Team GB sprinter who joined Gladiators in 2023, took part in last year’s Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special alongside professional dancer Nancy Xu.<\/p>\n
Aikines-Aryeetey said the Christmas Special \u201cwas so nice I just had to do it twice\u201d.<\/p>\n
The remaining contestants will be announced throughout August. The rumoured names <\/a>include former GB athlete Mo Farah and Sort Your Life Out presenter Stacey Solomon.<\/p>\nStrictly Come Dancing airs on BBC One from September through to December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-64763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\u2018Drag](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Strictly-Contestants-2025-La-Voix-Ellie-Goldstein.jpg\")
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