House of the Dragon star praised for "first good bit of dancing" in Strictly Come Dancing 2026 live show

Bethany Antonia and Nancy Xu have received high praise from Craig Revel Horwood following a joyful quickstep that saw them reach high up on the leaderboard.

The House of the Dragon star has been a huge fan of Strictly for as long as she can remember and performed to Stop This Flame by Celeste

Anton Du Beke led the judge's comments, describing the dance as "super duper", before Horwood added: "That's the first bit of good dancing we've seen all night!"

While the judges expected him to add more, as he usually would, he quickly moved to hear Motsi Mabuse's who was in agreement.

As they headed up to the auditorium to get their scores, the pair were completely blown away as they received 26 points!

"I felt like I've won a competition to be on Strictly Come Dancing," Bethany Antonia said.

Antonia and Xu the third all-female same-sex pairing on Strictly – the first since Jayde Adams and Karen Hauer in 2022 – something the actress described as a "privilege".

In an exclusive interview with Radio Times, Bethany said: "It feels like the biggest privilege in the world. I have been quite open about this, but watching Nicola and Katya do this in 2020 was a huge part of my life.

"It was a huge part of watching people in my family accept this beautiful show that we'd watched for years and years and years, and see this new way of the girls doing it together, and then being so accepting and exciting about it made me feel proud."

Bethany explained that she had thought to herself if she ever gets to chance to appear on Strictly, "it has to be with a woman", adding: "And so now it just feels like I just can't believe that we're here and we're doing it. And it was a thing that I talked into existence, so it feels like a real privilege."

Strictly Come Dancing returns on Saturday 26 September at 6:15pm on BBC One and iPlayer.

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Authors

Katelyn Mensah is the Senior Entertainment Writer for Radio Times, covering all major entertainment programmes, reality TV shows and the latest hard-hitting documentaries. She previously worked at The Tab, with a focus on reality TV and showbiz news and has obtained a BA (Hons) in Journalism.