Former Strictly Come Dancing winner Kelvin Fletcher took a huge risk in allowing TV cameras into his family life after scrapping plans to move to California before Covid
Actor, farmer and occasional racing driver Kelvin Fletcher is best known to many as the winner of 2019’s season of Strictly Come Dancing. But he might have had an even higher-profile career in Hollywood if fate hadn’t intervened.
Kelvin and his wife, Liz Marsland — who is herself an actor — had been planning to relocate to California until the Covid-19 pandemic derailed their plans.
“We were actually planning on moving to America,” Kelvin told the Country Life podcast. “That was our next chapter.”
As actors, Kelvin says, he and Liz wanted to chase the “Hollywood dream.”
But his dream took a different shape: “Unfortunately, the pandemic came, and I think we were unable to do that, but I think subconsciously, we still were ready and set on something different.”
That “something different” turned out to be relocating to the Peak District and buying a farm. Despite his long run as Andy Hopwood on Emmerdale, Kelvin didn’t know much about farming: “The irony is I played a farmer for 20 years in a fictional TV show, but ultimately we were what the industry would consider a new entrant.
“We thought, ‘What if? Is that a life we could do?’”
He explains that, as “townies,” he and Liz didn’t initially think of running the farm commercially, but just liked the idea of living in the country: “We were quite keen walkers before then, as I’m sure everybody became through Covid.”
But their biggest and riskiest move was allowing TV cameras into their home to chronicle their dramatic lifestyle change.
“I think they always say in show business, don’t work with children, don’t work with animals,” Kelvin joked. “Probably add a third rule to that… don’t work with your partner!”
He admitted that the idea wasn’t without its risks: “I think to invite a camera crew into our home — it’s a very sacred place.”
He explains that his previous on-camera experience involved playing a role, while his private self is always “kept safe.”
“I’m confident in that arena, whereas suddenly to be myself in that set of circumstances… we’re still on a journey of discovery. We’re three years into becoming farmers, if you like, so it feels naïve at times.”
Adding that the entire experience can be “daunting” at times, Kelvin explains: “That can be quite exposing, and maybe you feel a real sense of vulnerability. You’re doing that with your family.”
He concludes that his years in the Peak District have changed his attitudes to a great many things: “It’s affected our lives in a sense of our food choices, our understanding of nature, of the world, of the family dynamic, of life — what’s important, the ability that we all do try and be present.
“There are so many things that have changed as a direct result of moving to the countryside. And that’s been a bit of a revelation, really.”