Felicity Ward on how Australia’s Dancing with the Stars made her feel powerful

Australian comedian Felicity Ward has said that appearing on her nation’s version of Strictly Come Dancing is the hardest thing she’s ever done.

Appearing on this week’s episode of the Like This Love This podcast, Ward spoke to host Lucie McInerney about how the mental challenge of appearing on Dancing with the Stars was the most difficult hurdle to get over on the show, having been diagnosed with anxiety fifteen years ago.

Each week, the podcast invites guests to share the books, films, TV shows and podcasts they can’t stop recommending – and why they’ve struck such a chord. This week, Ward, who is currently starring in the Australian version of The Office, shares her love of classic sitcom Frasier and Tom Robbins's time-hopping novel Jitterbug Perfume.

While speaking about her time on Dancing with the Stars, on which she and her professional partner Aric Yegudkin reached the final in 2025, Ward said the mental challenge of competing on the show was well worth it for the reward.

“It changed my life – it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done”, Ward said.

“It wasn’t the physical thing – the physical thing was hard – it was the mental thing of going: ‘You are going to humiliate yourself, you are not getting better, you are forgetting everything even when you’ve just learned it,’” she explained.

Ward, expanding on her personal struggles, added: “I’ve had a really hard five or six years.

“I had a baby four months before I got post-natal depression. I took a job when my son was two months old in Australia and had a bullet point of horrors happen, culminating in Covid and had to be emergency flown back to the UK. I’ve also been through a separation, my son’s Dad and I have split up. I was a single mum in London, I’ve got no family here.”

She continued: “It’s been really, really challenging and I just thought life was going to be sad which is antithetical to the person that I am because I’m quite joyful. I didn’t know I had resigned myself to that.”

“When it got to Dancing with the Stars, we filmed the whole series over 23 days, ine episodes, so we were recording an episode every three or four days, so it retrained my brain to go ‘things can be stressful and incredible at the same time’ and every time I danced I felt so powerful.”

Ward, 45, first tried her hand at acting but found great success in comedy, performing across numerous festivals in Australia. She came to wider public attention on the sketch show The Ronnie Johns Half Hour. She has also appeared on Spicks and Specks, Thank God You're Here and Good News Week.

She’s returned to acting in more recent years, landing roles in The Inbetweeners 2, The Letdown and as Hannah Howard in a recent Australian version of The Office.

Like This Love This is available wherever you get your podcasts, with new episodes released every Thursday.