Giovanni Pernice ‘furious’ over Amanda Abbington’s Strictly claims as ‘real reason’ tapes won’t be released is revealed
GIOVANNI Pernice has revealed the ‘real reason’ footage of his training with Amanda Abbington won’t be released.
The former Strictly Come Dancing professional dancer is said to be “furious” after Amanda made “serious and defamatory allegations” against him before the BBC investigation in complete.
Amanda reiterated her claims that Giovanni is blocking the release of rehearsal footage.
Giovanni told the Mail: “Giovanni has not seen or blocked [anyone from seeing] the video footage, which belongs to the BBC.
“Gio has chosen not to receive it to preserve the integrity of the review.”
However, Amanda says there are 50 hours of recordings, insisting: “There is evidence out there of what happened in that room and I’m not the one who’s blocking it.
“I’ve said anyone can watch it, but he [Giovanni] doesn’t want anyone to see it.”
Giovanni’s team claim they have “bombshell evidence” to clear his name.
A friend of his told the paper: “He can’t wait for the truth to come out, it will be a huge relief for him. Giovanni is not going let this go.”
Giovanni is said to be furious over allegations of “humiliating sexual behaviour” towards Amanda.
During an emotional sit-down interview with the Sherlock Holmes actress, Channel 4 News anchor Krishnan-Guru Murthy said: “I heard, not from you, from somebody else, about an instance of, I suppose you’d call it humiliating behaviour of a sexual nature, is that right?”
Breaking down in tears, Amanda replied: “Yeah. I mean, you know, one of the many things.”
Amanda admitted that she could not go into the full details about the nature of what she allegedly suffered as it is still under investigation.
Talking about the nature of the ‘abuse’, she added: “It was unnecessary and when stuff was getting thrown at me I’d shut down because I’ve been in abusive situations before in the past so I recognised the red flags, so I’d shut down and wouldn’t be able to do it because I felt attacked, not literally attacked.”