'People have secrets': BBC Strictly star Ellie Leach's surprising confession
23.03.2024 - 08:19
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
She's the darling of the dancefloor as the reigning champion of BBC Strictly Come Dancing. Now Ellie Leach is dancing to a different beat, making her professional stage debut in the new touring producton of Cluedo 2 - the Next Chapter.
She is starring as Miss Scarlett in the play, the iconic femme fatale character from the classic whodunnit board game. The new show, which sets the characters in the swinging 1960s in what is billed as a hilarious whodunnit, heads to Ellie's home turf at The Lowry theatre in Salford from April 2.
But when we caught up with Ellie earlier this week, she had a surprising confession of her own to make.
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Ellie, 23, from Audenshaw, laughs: "People keep being really shocked at this, but I've never played Cluedo before! We were never a board game kind of family. We never really played board games that much.
"But even if you've not played it, you know the game, you know the iconic characters, you know the kind of story of the whodunnit. So yeah, even though I've never played it, I did know the back story of it all.
"That's why it is so amazing bringing a board game into the theatre, you have these iconic characters but they don't have a story. So you can make them and mould them into what you want them to be."
Miss Scarlett is usually depicted as the bombshell seductress in the board game. But Ellie's interpretation of the character offers a new spin in Cluedo 2, a follow up to the previous hit tour of Cluedo.
She says: "She's probably not as bold as what people might expect, we've moved away a bit from the stereotype she's got. She's charming I'd say, she's kind of sweet, but I think like every character in the