Judi Love opens up about emotional experience of first all-black 'Loose Women' panel
Watch: Loose Women praised by viewers following first all-black panel.
Judi Love has opened up about the emotional experience of taking part in the first all-black Loose Women panel.
The comedian appeared alongside Charlene White, Brenda Edwards and Kelle Bryan when the ITV show made history last year by featuring four black women.
The women also appeared together again on the show earlier this month.
Since taking part in the history-making panel, Love says she has been overwhelmed by the feedback she has received.
“Being a part of history in representation with regards to having four black women, these amazing talented women, was such an emotional event," she told the PA news agency.
“I was so emotional because the fact this was such a big thing in 2020 made me realise how it was so different and how much it hadn’t been done.
"And then it made me think of many other women of colour who have been in entertainment before me and they missed out on things because this wasn’t seen as something that viewers would watch, or it just wasn’t even thought about because of the demographics."
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Love says she was inundated with messages of support following the airing of the show.
“I got a lot of tweets and messages of people sending me pictures of their little girls, saying: ‘Thank you, now my daughter or my son has someone to look at and think they can do that.’
“I don’t think people realise how much it affects someone’s dreams, or feeling like they are capable, when they don’t see someone that looks like them doing it and whether that is your ethnicity, whether that is your size, whether that is your cultural background, whether that is your disability, whether that is your sexuality, it really does make a difference in someone’s life.”
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Love said she is hopeful viewers will also take something positive away from her new dating show, Dating No Filter, where people at home can potentially identify mistakes they might be making on dates.
“In people you can always see a bit of yourself, depending on what you’re watching or who you are watching, so it will hopefully make some people realise that this dating game is a lot different than they assume," she explains.
“Sometimes you see people and you think: ‘Ooh you’d be good for my friend,’ you want to hook somebody up and it doesn’t work out and you think: ‘Why not? What happened?’
“So when you see these dates you are like: ‘Right, that is what happened.’
“One thing I noticed is: ‘My gosh, some people do not have any chat.
“It’s a basic. (They ask) just: ‘How old are you? Where do you live?’ That’s it!
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“There is no real depth in the question," she continues.
“It’s a lack of life experience, it’s possibly a lack of dating, it’s a lack of actually knowing what you want.
“If you knew what you want you would be going for specific questions so you would be looking at, like what do you value in relationships? What qualities are you looking for? But when you don’t know in yourself, you don’t even know to ask those questions.”
Dating No Filter, which will also feature comedians including Joel Dommett, Daisy May Cooper and Susan Wokoma, starts on 25 February on Sky One and NOW TV.
Additional reporting PA.
