Dancing With The Stars has changed Felicity Ward’s life. The comedian, who has lived in London for more than a decade, spent eight weeks in Australia rehearsing and performing with dance partner Aric Yegudkin.
“I’ve had an incredibly difficult five years – with COVID, and I had a baby, and I had postnatal depression, and none of my family is in the UK,” Felicity, 44, tells TV WEEK.
She says the comedy industry was “really affected” by COVID, and her self-esteem was “really affected” by motherhood.
“I think a lot of mothers have that, losing myself and then trying to find myself again.”
Felicity, who starred in the Australian version of The Office, says being on Dancing With The Stars was “so hard”, like a lot of things in her life in the last five years have been. But she felt she had to get it together and perform.
“So then I would get this huge rush from doing the performance, and I swear to God it rewired my neural pathways, where it told my brain, ‘Things can be hard and you can still have a good time.’ And so I came back to London and I was the happiest that I’ve been in years over here. It’s been genuinely life-changing.”
Not only did Dancing With The Stars change Felicity’s way of thinking, it also changed her body.
“I think I dropped two dress sizes over the show, but because I put muscle on I was the same weight,” she explains. “I was ripped! I’ve never been so muscly in my life.”
When she got back to the UK after filming finished, she went to the park with her five-year-old son, and he asked her to carry him home.
“I was like, ‘Honey, I can’t, it’s uphill,’ and he’s like, ‘Please, Mummy.’ And then I picked him up and I just walked him up the hill and I’m like, ‘Go and get a friend! I’ll carry him as well!’
“Oh mate, being strong is the best.”
Since moving to the UK, Felicity has had plenty of work, appearing on shows such as Richard Osman’s House Of Games and The Stand Up Sketch Show. But she would like to spend more time in Australia.
“I would move back there in a heartbeat, but I’ve got an English son,” she says. “So I just come back for work as often as I can, to see people there.”
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