Michelle Visage thinks her late mother helped her secure Giovanni Pernice as her 'Strictly Come Dancing' partner.
Michelle Visage
The 'RuPaul's Drag Race' judge thinks there was some divine intervention to ensure she got to dance with her first choice professional partner on the latin and ballroom show.
She said: "I was so excited to get Giovanni as my partner. There were a few of the pros that I was hoping for, but he was my number one. You're not allowed to ask for a certain pro, and even if you did, they're not gonna listen. So this was down to my mother in heaven, I swear. She knows I'm gonna work hard and that I need someone on the same level.
"Giovanni's a Virgo, I'm a Virgo, which means we're work, work, work all the time. He's really tough - our first rehearsal was for seven hours. It's like we're an old married couple in New York City, who own an Italian restaurant and yell at each other at the top of their lungs. Ours is a bickering, loving relationship."
And the 51-year-old television personality hopes her appearance on the show will inspire people and make them realise that they're "never too old to learn something new".
She added to The Telegraph newspaper: "I want to do 'Strictly' to show people out there, and my daughters, that you're never too old to learn something new, and if you think you can't, you absolutely can. The only limits are the ones you set yourself ... I feel like people look at us and count us out because we're women of a certain age, and I don't think that's fair. People should be surprised. There's almost a part of us wants to work harder than the youngsters because we've got more to prove. And we ache more!"
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