Exclusive: Rhys Stephenson on his Strictly experience, raising awareness for mental health and more

msn.com:

How is the Strictly live tour going so far? How did it feel to be approached to do Strictly Come Dancing and then what was the whole experience like for you? I quickly ran to my car, and we talked about it, it was so exciting.

It was so cool, because I wanted to go all the way. And then when you do the show and realise how difficult it is, it was like 'oh my gosh, will I go all the way?', because it wasn’t just about dancing, it’s personality as well, way better dancers have gone home quicker not because of their dancing ability but because the audience just didn’t connect with them which adds a whole different level of difficulty to the competition because you can’t try and change yourself to just appeal to people, you’ve just got to hope that people like who you are.

That tied up with it being such a competitive thing and I thought, well I’m not enjoying that, and I thought if I want to do something that’s really competitive and really difficult to get into, I might as well enjoy it and love it so that even if I spend the rest of my life trying to get there, at least I like it.

Like someone says, I’d rather do something that I love and terrible at than do something that I’m really good at but hate. Then I started doing presenting in uni for a news show for our student channel, and that was just a hobby really, I’d never done presenting, I’d always done acting and performing and stuff like that.