Birmingham-born lesbian actor joins Strictly cast
Birmingham-born and raised actor, Bethany Antonia, has been announced as one of the celebrity dancers in 2026’s Strictly Come Dancing cast. The actor who is perhaps best known for playing Baela Targaryen in HBO’s House of the Dragon is set to appear as a contestant on the twenty-fourth series of the hit BBC competition show.
Bethany Antonia was born in Birmingham (1997), before moving to a small coastal town in the southwestern Charente-Maritime region of France, and then returning to Birmingham when she was eleven. She studied musical theatre at Birmingham Ormiston Academy, and began her career as a teenager, starring in a short film adaptation of The Tempest in 2012, made by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, following open auditions.
In 2024, Bethany came out as a lesbian on Instagram, in response to a racist comment. The actor of English and Jamaican heritage, publicly responded to an abusive message she received, sharing a screenshot of it on her stories, adding a clown emoji, and writing “wait till they find out I’m gay too.”
Throughout her career, Bethany Antonia has starred in roles for both stage and screen including: Netflix's crime drama Stay Close, the ITV biopic Nolly, and playing Eurydice in the West End production of Hadestown.
Bethany will officially hit the dancefloor in the first ‘live’ show from Saturday 26th September, following the Strictly Come Dancing launch show on Saturday 19th September, which sees the celebrity contestants get paired up. The actor will train and dance with Strictly pro, Nancy Xu, who joined the cast in 2019, receiving her first celebrity partner two years later for the nineteenth series.
Bethany and Nancy will become the sixth ‘same-sex’ couple in Strictly Come Dancing history, following: drag queen La Voix (Christopher) paired with Aljaž Škorjanec, stage and screen actor Layton Williams paired with Nikita Kuzmin, radio DJ Richie Anderson paired with Giovanni Pernice, Great British Bake Off contestant John Waite paired with Johannes Radebe, and olympic medal-winning professional boxer Nicola Adams paired with Katya Jones. 2026 will mark only the second all-female celebrity and pro dance duo for the show, following Nicola Adams, who was sadly forced to withdraw from the competition after Katya tested positive for Covid-19.
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