Will Best has revealed the awful thing he had to do to land his Celebrity Big Brother presenting gig and how co-host AJ Odudu got involved.
The TV host, 39, confessed he accidentally implied his father and his girlfriend’s mother had died when giving a vague excuse to get out of another gig so he could go to the test screening.
Speaking to Jen Becks on her star-studded podcast, Sliding Doors, ahead of the show launch, Will admitted that he hadn’t intended to apply for the job.
But AJ, 36, – who already had one of the presenting jobs – messaged him asking for a tape of the two of them presenting together, because she wanted Will to work alongside her.
He said: ‘The process of me getting the job for Big Brother was quite quick. It kind of came out of nowhere.’
CBB’s Will Best has revealed the awful thing he had to do to land his presenting gig on the show and said how AJ Odudu got involved
The TV presenter, 39, confessed that he accidentally implied his father and his girlfriend’s mother had died when giving a vague excuse to get out of another gig so he could go to the CBB test screening
‘Me and AJ are mates so we were chatting anyway and said she was talking to ITV about a really big job but she couldn’t say what it was. And then she messaged and like ”have you got any footage of me and you doing any hosting together because I really want to do this ITV thing with you”, he added.
‘I got some other friends from production companies that we worked with to pull some stuff together and sent it over.
‘And then off the back of that she messaged and was like ”OK they are going to want to get you in”
‘My agent got involved and stuff and because it was all happening so quickly they were like ”this is a big job and we want Will to screen test for it but there is only one day.”’
Will then explained that the screen test, which was already arranged for other applicants, was on the same day that he was in Abu Dhabi hosting a music festival.
He was supposed to fly out the day before.
Because Will was the ‘wild card, late addition’, he revealed that when he asked for the screen test to be rearranged there was nothing that could be done because the studios and crew were already booked.
Will revealed he wasn’t satisfied with not trying to audition because it felt ‘like quite a big thing that we should try and make work’.
Will admitted that he hadn’t intended to apply for the hosting gig and it wasn’t until AJ got the job that she messaged him because she wanted Will to work alongside her
Will then explained that the Big Brother screen test, which was already arranged for other applicants, was on the same day that he was in Abu Dhabi hosting a music festival
And after looking at the schedule he found there was a way around of missing one day of the shoot and it require a ‘creative tweak’ to the first day of filming as long as he got there really early the next day.
He and his agent agreed that he couldn’t reveal that something else had come up because he believed they would just say they had already booked him.
So Will and his agent made up the vague excuse that he had a ‘family emergency’.
Under the impression that the Dutch team waiting for him would not ask follow-up questions, they thought their plan had worked.
But when he finished the screen test in the UK and landed in Abu Dhabi, Will revealed that he was asked ‘who had died?’ the second he got into the car.
‘If it was a British crew, I feel like you wouldn’t have to explain anything. Let’s not talk about it, for god sake lets not get into any emotional or serious conversations’, he said.
‘But when I landed, the first thing the crew that picked me up from the airport said was ”who died, who was it who died?”
‘And I was like ”oh well, erm, well like you know”, I didn’t say no one had died but I didn’t confirm they had.
‘I just sort of babbled for a bit about like, ”well like my dad is really old, my girlfriend’s mum has not been well, like maybe one of them had died. Maybe both of them died. I don’t know.”’
After looking at the schedule he found there was a way around of missing one day of the shoot and it require a ‘creative tweak’ to the first day of filming as long as he got there really early the next day (pictured with AJ)
Will and his agent made up the excuse that he had a ‘family emergency’ and when he finished the screen test in the UK and landed in Abu Dhabi, he was asked ‘who had died?’ the second he got into the car and in panic, he babbled something about his dad and girlfriend’s mother
‘And they were kind of prying and they were like ”oh that is really tough” and I was like ”yeah you but you know you have got to rally round as a family when stuff like that happens” and they were kind of cool with it in the end and let it go.’
Will made his Big Brother debut in October 2023 for the show’s iconic return, which saw Jordan Sangha win the social experiment.
He was born in London in 1985 and has been in presenting since he was 24.
His first TV job was on the music channel Viva, where he fronted the chat show Suck My Pop and the MTV Top 20 chart show.
Between 2011 and 2012, Will had a spot on T4 – a weekend segment between morning shows on Channel 4, which also boasted Dermot O’Leary, Vernon Kay and Jameela Jamil before being axed.
Remaining with Channel 4 for another year, he went on to present the iTunes festival, The Crush and Love Shaft on the network’s various channels.
But his prime-time break came on ITV in 2017 when he presented the talent show Dance Dance Dance with Britain’s Got Talent’s Alesha Dixon. However, the show was not recommissioned for a second series.
Although 2023’s series will be his first as a Big Brother presenter, Will was a regular contributor to Big Brother’s Bit On The Side from 2013 to 2014.
Listen the Sliding Doors podcast on:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/sliding-doors/id1546497838?i=1000648316694
He said: ‘And I was like ”oh well, erm, well like you know”, I didn’t say no one had died but I didn’t confirm they had. ‘I just sort of babbled for a bit about like, ”well like my dad is really old, my girlfriend’s mum has not been well, like maybe one of them had died. Maybe both of them died. I don’t know.”’and they were kind of cool with it in the end and let it go.’
