In October, Bobby Brazier covered our men's issue just as Strictly Come Dancing was starting. As he finds himself in the final this weekend, we revisit our chat with Bobby...
It took Bobby Brazier a moment to realise what he’d signed up for when he inked his contract with the glorious annual BBC ballroom bonanza that isStrictly Come Dancing. The model and EastEnders star isn’t a nightclubber by instinct (‘not so much’), but he understands the power of dancing on an elemental level. ‘It’s just an expression of joy,’ he says succinctly.
Brazier could be talking about himself. In one short year in the spotlight, he has become a national synonym for happiness, a cheerful exponent of British masculinity at its least toxic. At 20 years of age, with his slender frame, big gobstopper smile, model cheekbones and wavy hair, he looks like the most obvious contender for a junior Harry-Styles-in-waiting, a sweetly benign figure of modern British manhood we can all rally around. If so, Strictly could well act as his X Factor, catapulting him expediently towards becoming a rightful Saturday night TV fixture, still the swiftest shortcut to national ubiquity.
First, he needs to learn to dance, on the job. ‘I thought I had dancing down,’ he says. ‘But I definitely do not.’ It’s the Monday of the first week of Strictly performances when we speak. Brazier is feeling the burn. ‘There’s technique involved,’ he laughs. At this stage, it may be a laugh of horror. Partnered with pro dancer Dianne Buswell, what he thought he knew about dancing is turning out to be only half the story.
‘The repetitiveness of it is hard,’ he says. ‘Continually not getting things right is hard. Wanting to just relax and not feeling like you should is hard. But equally, when it goes right and you’ve worked hard and you start getting steps and stuff it is a really, really special, nice feeling.’
Part of the Strictly experience for the novice dancer is unlearning everything you thought you knew about dancing. Brazier says his favourite DJs are Jamie Jones and Black Coffee and that Jones’s own propulsive house banger, Forward Motion, is the one track that guarantees his presence on a dance floor. ‘That makes me want to sweat. But there’s loads. I like house and disco; I like R&B and neo-soul. I like to move.’
Scouted by a model agent as a teenager while on his way to a difficult meeting with his headmaster while still a schoolboy (can I ask what the meeting was about? ‘No, you cannot!’), Brazier says that a life in the spotlight was something he dreamt about from a young age.
He got used to being looked at early. ‘I think that as a kid that’s all I wanted,’ he says. ‘I was desperate for that when I was younger. I made myself ready. I spent so much time making myself ready because I started to believe that could happen and I could have that. Because I wanted it so much. When I was 14, 15, even when I was 12, I remember having thoughts like that, desires like that. I spent a lot of my childhood years just wishing for attention.’
Part of his quick ascendancy to fame is his lineage, as the son of charming, ebullient TV fixture Jeff Brazier and the late, great Jade Goody, the absorbing Big Brother scion who foreshadowed every aspect of the democratisation of the fame cycle with Warholian precision. Her son embodies both with almost disarming familiarity.
‘Family is everything,’ he says. The tragic death of his mother in 2009, when he was just five, makes you want to watch over his burgeoning fame with care and warmth, something his naturally cherubic disposition does nothing to deter.
When he started appearing on the catwalks of Milan and Paris and in editorial fashion shoots in 2020, his familiarity worked in his favour. Here was an ordinary kid blessed with extraordinary features.
At 16, he was young enough not to let the modelling go to his head and says his mates just saw it as his job. ‘Like my best mate’s a roofer; Bob’s a model.’ He loved the experience though. ‘Certain jobs that I did were great and kind of high profile, I guess, in the modelling world.’ The catwalk was his favourite aspect. ‘That was the most fun. Fashion week has always been my favourite because, you know, you basically go on holiday, make loads of friends, go around Italy or Paris with this group of boys and just have so much fun, regardless of what shows or castings you get. You’re a brotherhood for a week or two.’
His favourite fashion week? ‘Milan has the nicest fashion houses. You go to Milan potentially excited to walk for, you know, houses like Armani and Dolce & Gabbana and whoever else.’
In late 2022, Brazier was cast as Freddie Slater in EastEnders, part of the matriarchal family at the heart of Albert Square. He instantly modernised the soap, bringing in a generation of viewers that have long since abandoned soap opera in favour of quicker online storytelling media.
‘Freddie Slater is probably a slightly exaggerated version of Bobby Brazier, in many ways,’ he muses. ‘He craves a sense of belonging and unity between the people that he loves and are close to him. Slightly mischievous. I’d say he was cheeky.’
At this year’s National Television Awards, Brazier was crowned with his first acting award, for Rising Star, as voted by the public. It felt like a fitting first garland for what is going to be an astral career, anointing Brazier as Britain’s man for tomorrow.
‘It was just so sweet, you know?’ he says. ‘That was just an unbelievable experience. I’ve watched videos back of when all the cast of EastEnders and my dad and my friends were reacting and that was everything. That was the sweetest thing about it.’
Image credits:
Photographer: Danny Lowe
Stylist: Martin Metcalf
Grooming: Josh Knight at Caren using Horace
Photographer Assistant: Felix Jonkler
Stylist Assistant: Jemima Farrow
Bobby wears: vest and shorts AMI, belt Our Legacy, socks Falke, shoes UGG