Strictly's Janette Manrara: I experienced 'expert' imposter syndrome
The former professional dancer turned TV presenter talks about juggling motherhood, gratitude and emotional wellness.
The dancer-turned-TV presenter Janette Manrara believes she suffered from a type of imposter syndrome known as ‘the expert’ for much of her early career.
“Expert” imposter syndrome is a sense of imposter syndrome — doubting your abilities or feeling like a fraud — which affects highly-skilled professionals or people who are high achievers or experts in their field.
Manrara explains it as feeling “like you need to know every inch of every detail of everything before you can really consider yourself somebody that’s capable of doing it”.
In fact, when she was just starting out, “I always got to the final rounds of every audition in LA and then I didn’t get the job because I was too short” – something that was explicitly said, Manrara, who is 5ft, claims. “Or maybe they didn’t want a Latina. Auditions are ruthless.”
“When you’re young and you know you’re just figuring out who you are, and you’re in the world that I was in, which was audition after audition, it’s all very much like typecasting… it was difficult to love myself exactly as I was.”
It began to turn around when she appeared on US TV show So You Think You Can Dance in 2009.
“In the end, the things I thought weren’t my strengths, ended up being my biggest strengths,” she said. “When I joined Strictly they needed all kinds of heights for all kinds of celebrities – it didn’t matter! It was a real lesson to me in learning to love myself exactly as I am, that the right opportunity that values me as I am would come along, and it did.
“I had to stop for a minute and reassess.”
Janette Manrara
“Now, actually being Latina and being petite are like my superpowers.”
Her new book, which is part self-help, takes readers through Manrara’s highs and lows on route to her own happiness, with advice on issues like self-acceptance, failure, social media comparison and gratitude – and practical exercises dotted throughout.
As she became a household name in the UK thanks to Strictly, success came with feelings of wanting a bigger house, nicer clothes and better holidays. “You can very easily spiral into this mentality of always wanting more and never just being content and grateful for what you’ve already got.
“I just wanted the next thing, and the next thing and the next thing, and then I wasn’t enjoying what I already had. I had to stop for a minute and reassess.”
Since then, practicing gratitude has become an important part of looking after herself. “At 40, I feel better than ever, in terms of my mental wellbeing. Everything that I talk about in the book, I applied in my own life. I have seen a huge shift in my emotional wellbeing for making these small little choices and using these little tools.”
She’s also more mindful of her social media use these days. “I stopped looking at the numbers. I stopped looking at the number of likes. I stopped looking at who commented. Because that was kind of spiralling. It’s a dangerous game to be constantly thinking, ‘How many followers do I have?’, ‘How many likes did I get on that post?’ – it’s addictive.”
Manrara and Škorjanec tried for a couple of years before falling pregnant with their daughter, born in July 2023, yet she says, “I’m grateful that I waited until I was almost 40 to have Lyra, because now I feel like I have an emotional capacity and strong mental state to deal with parenting.
“[It] makes me a better mother to Lyra,” she adds. With parenting, “comes an immense responsibility to raise them as best as you possibly can, teach them to be good people, teach them to be good citizens of the world – and I think I can do that better now, after I have done all the work on myself.
“My body’s changed so much since I stopped dancing, and especially now after becoming a mother. I love my body – it’s not what it used to be, and that’s OK because it’s brought me Lyra, and I train differently now, I do weightlifting.
“I’ve learned to love my body exactly as it is now, because it’s led me here.”
Manrara says seeing husband Aljaž Škorjanec return to the the show after two years makes her long to join in too.
“I get FOMO [fear of missing out] when they film the group numbers. I loved the numbers with all the professionals, it was always my favourite time of the series – I wish I could be dancing with all of them again,” says the 40-year-old, who was on Strictly from 2013 to 2020.
“Before Aljaž was [back] on Strictly, he really took over home life, being with Lyra and looking after her so I could do It Takes Two last year and the Strictly Live Tour. Now it’s kind of my turn – his schedule’s gone so crazy going back on the show.
“It’s a big job to be a pro on that show,” she says, from choreographer to teacher, creative, empath, listener, “You have to wear a lot of hats… I’m just a champion of them, because I know how hard they all work to do what they do.”
Manrara had a successful eight-year stint on the popular BBC one programme – which saw two professional dancers leave the show following allegations about teaching methods, which both denied – but she didn’t always feel like she belonged there.
“When I came onto Strictly, the producers knew – everyone knew – that I had never really competed in ballroom or Latin. I had a musical theatre and television background. I obviously knew Latin, I’d been doing it most of my career but I’d never actually competed in it,” says Manrara, who was born to Cuban parents in Florida. “So it was a very different background in comparison to other professionals on Strictly.”
In her first year on the show, after moving to the UK from Miami, she was in the dance off every single week for the first four weeks with celebrity partner fashion designer Julien Macdonald – while Škorjanec, whose first year it was as well, lifted the glitterball trophy with Abbey Clancy.
“When you’re in a new country, in a new job, it’s a voting system… I just felt like I didn’t belong. I felt like I’m an imposter here. I don’t come from the same world that every other professional did, clearly the country didn’t like me because they didn’t vote for us – all those insecurities and doubts really took over.”
Manrara says she still dances at home with Škorjanec – who is paired up with Love Island star Tasha Ghouri on this year’s show – “But I’m not going to lie to you, Aljaž’s favorite partner at the moment is [our one-year-old daughter] Lyra. He’ll pick her up and do a little Foxtrot with her around the kitchen, and her eyes light up.”
Now she balances hosting the BBC Strictly spin off show, It Takes Two, occasional BBC Morning Live appearances and being a mum, plus she’s just released her first book, Tiny Dancer, Big World, about how to boost happiness and find fulfilment. “The juggle is real, the juggle is intense!” Manrara admits.
