Oti Mabuse reveals heartbreaking reason she cut her mother off for a YEAR after family fallout – and admits she threatens to ban her from seeing grandchildren to keep her in check

Oti Mabuse has revealed the heartbreaking reason for her year-long split from mother Dudu following a disagreement on her career path and opened up about their relationship.

The Strictly Come Dancing star joined the Loose Women panel on Friday morning and discussions turned to Brooklyn Beckham’s relationship with his parents.

Today it has emerged that relations between the Beckhams deteriorated so much last summer that at one point eldest son Brooklyn asked his parents to contact him only through their lawyers.

Brooklyn, 26, said he does not want his parents to contact him or make public statements about him on social media through legal correspondence between his son and his parents.

Discussing the collapse of family relationships following the news, Oti, 35, was quizzed by ITV daytime star Kay Adams about whether she had fallen out with any family members.

The professional dancer said that she did not speak to her mother for a year after they could not agree on her career choice.

The professional dancer revealed she did not speak to her mother Dudu for a year after they clashed over her career choice (pictured: Dudu with Oti’s sister Motsi Mabuse)

Oti, who has a civil engineering degree after his family applied for the course on his behalf, admitted that everything was over after Dudu expressed his disappointment.

The 63-year-old told Kay and Loose Women panellists Nadia Sawalha and Jane Moore: ‘For me, we have a similar relationship in my family, especially when someone is upset we don’t talk to each other.

‘Like, I need space because I can’t take back what’s coming out of my mouth.

‘But there were situations with my mother when I left engineering and told her ‘I’m going to be a professional dancer’, we didn’t talk for a year.

‘A whole year – and I think that love was like, “I paid the price for this future for you, I want you to be safe, dancing maybe isn’t a safe career and it’s really sad that you’re not doing what I want,” but for me it was like, I can’t handle this in my life.

‘I really needed him to support me, so when I walk into a room I know I’m supported by my entire family and we didn’t talk until we had our Kumbaya moment.

‘I had a glass of wine and then I said, ‘Okay, talk.’

He has previously spoken about his mother’s reaction to him abandoning the civil engineering path at Desert Island Disks: ‘[My parents] They were against it, they were absolutely against it.

Discussing the collapse of family relationships following the news, Oti, 35, was quizzed by ITV daytime star Kay Adams about whether she had fallen out with any family members

Oti, who is the mother of a daughter and whom she met with her husband Marius Lepure in 2023, said that she had to threaten her mother not to ‘see’ her little child if she ‘does not change her language’.

‘This is the worst decision ever,’ they said. But I was really, really not happy because being a full-time engineer meant I couldn’t dance.

‘I didn’t feel like it was something I was ready to give up at that point… it just didn’t sit right with my soul or my heart.’

Loose Women discussions soon turned to grandparents, with Oti admitting she still clashes with Dudu at times over the way she talks about her grandchildren.

Oti, who is the mother of a daughter and whom she welcomed with her husband Marius Lepure in 2023, explained that she had to threaten her mother not to ‘see’ her little child if she ‘does not change her language’.

The South African-born star added: ‘In my African culture we just say what we want, we’re very brutally honest – but if my mum says something I don’t like about the baby’s weight, I say, ‘Change your language or you won’t see it.’

‘Sometimes when you say what parents say, it gives you tough skin, but now as a mother that tough skin is a shield. [for my daughter] Now.’

However, Oti insisted that she and her mother now have a good relationship and that Dudu is very much loved by her grandson, adding: ‘She is a wonderful grandmother, the most loved grandmother.’

In 2019, Oti’s sister Motsi spoke about how her mother helped Oti get into dance classes as a child, as she struggled to find a dance teacher to study dance with growing up due to racial tensions during Apartheid in South Africa.

Loose Women discussions soon turned to grandparents, with Oti admitting she still clashes with Dudu at times over the way she talks about her grandchildren.

In 2019, Oti’s sister Motsi, who is a judge on Strictly Come Dancing, told how her mother helped her get into dance lessons as a child.

Motsi, 44, a judge on Strictly Come Dancing, spoke candidly. Mirror He describes his childhood struggle to learn lessons for both himself and Oti as it was a ‘difficult time’ in the country.

He explained: ‘It was difficult to find people to give us instructions.

‘It was a very difficult time in South Africa, so it was really hard to be a little girl and push yourself in these types of dances where there weren’t any other black girls.

‘And when we got the chance to learn the waltz and cha cha cha at a weekend club, we soon became better than the teacher.’

Her mother said Dudu was so willing to support her children’s dream that she rented a room at a local kindergarten and found a teacher to help them.

She and Oti’s mother also learned to sew dresses to help them make dresses for dance performances, and they also started a catering company to help fund their lessons and trips abroad for competitions.

The dancers were born in Kraalhoek, Bophuthatswana, in 1981, but moved with their mother, a teacher, and father, Peter, a lawyer, to the town of Mabopane, near Pretoria, South Africa, in 1983.

Living in ‘Block C’ – the streets had no names – he had to travel to school on a separate bus for white children under a government run by PW Botha.

Dancing was a way for the siblings to escape the reality of racial tensions in South Africa, and they struggled to overcome the prejudice they faced.

He also revealed that the family suffered tragedy when his older brother Neo committed suicide at the age of 18.

In 1995, shortly after the end of apartheid, Motsi and his family left the town and moved to a larger house in a Pretoria suburb.

During this time, her parents sent her and her sisters, Phemelo and Oti, to private school and dance lessons.

Recalling those years, Motsi said that his success could still make him cry.

On a recent holiday she said: ‘I started crying because I was like ‘wow’, who knew when we started that I would end up here. “It’s just an incredible story.”

Loose Women airs weekdays from 12.30pm on ITV1 and ITX