The Strictly Come Dancing winner, 40, broke down over the heartbreaking moment he feared he couldn’t raise his two kids alone — but a holiday changed everything
Strictly Come Dancing winner Ore Oduba has admitted he’s become a better dad since splitting from wife Portia Jett — after once fearing he couldn’t raise his two kids alone.
The TV star, 40, who won the BBC series in 2016, split from personal trainer Portia, 36, in 2024 after nine years of marriage. The pair share son Roman, eight, and daughter Genie, four.
In rare comments about his home life this week, Ore lifted the lid on the heartbreaking moment he feared he couldn’t be a dad on his own. “There was a moment at the beginning of my separation, I remember being with my kids…. looking at them and thinking, I don’t know how to do this,” he said. “I didn’t think I could be their dad on my own..”
The TV presenter said his fears were made worse by a brutal jibe from his own mum, who doubted he could cope. “I remember my mum saying, it’s not like Ore knows how to look after two kids,” he recalled. “What she said really hit a nerve. It is the thing I was most insecure about.”
He added he has since made up with his mum, saying their bond is now “transformed one hundred per cent”.
The star – who last November revealed he’d been struggling with a 30-year porn addiction – admitted he’d fallen into the same trap as his own dad, thinking being a father was all about cash.
“For me, fatherhood was all about providing, and I didn’t have any of the other tools,” he said. “I remember almost feeling like… I need to make more money. By spending time with my kids, I’m wasting the opportunity that I could be spending providing for them.”
He added: “How screwed up is that, that that is the way so many of us think about parenting?” Speaking on his podcast, The Actors’ Safe Space, he added it all changed when he took Roman and Genie to France on a recent holiday – his first trip with them abroad on his own.
“No one else to lean on, no one else to remember passports, no one else to change the money, no one else to check in, no one else carried the luggage. Just me and two four-footers,” he explained.
“At no point did it ever feel like it was too much. It just felt like the next thing I needed to do. We had the most unbelievable adventure. Three days, three nights of just full presence. I remember looking at my kids and seeing them for who they are for the very first time in their lives.
“And I remember seeing in their eyes, them seeing me, in this real wholeness. And just thinking, this is everything I’ve ever wanted. I never knew that this was possible.”
Ore, who sold the £935,000 family home in Kent after the split, said the trip changed everything. “That was the beginning of my relationship with my children,” he said. “I’m really proud of that.”
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