Gemma Atkinson: ‘It works with Gorka because he’s away a lot’

She chats marriage, motherhood and podcasts

gemma atkinson and gorka marquez

by heat staff |
Published on

She’s an actress, model, radio host, former Strictly star and author – and now Gemma Atkinson – who is also a mum of two – has added more to her hectic schedule and launched her own podcast.

And as podcasts go, The Overshare With Gemma Atkinson definitely lives up to its name. On it, the 39 year old presenter chats to guests about a host of different topics – from the emotional to the shocking and downright hilarious – and has an expert on hand to help process the curveballs life can throw us.

While her guests share their personal stories, Gemma is pretty candid about her own life, including her relationship with Strictly dancer Gorka Márquez, who she began dating in 2017. She explains that, apart from wanting to know about her training schedule, it’s the subject that fans ask about the most. “Gorka works away a lot and people go, ‘How does that even work?’ But I think that’s why it works,” she jokes.

gemma atkinson and gorka marquez
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“It’s either kind of out of sight, out of mind, or absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

People are also concerned about how she juggles looking after Mia, four, and baby Thiago on her own, but Gemma is unfazed. She says, “I get asked a lot, ‘How do you do that on your own with the kids and him being away?’ But it’s all we’ve known in our relationship. So, I’m like, ‘How do you live with someone 24/7 and see them all the time?’”

Gemma has long done things her own way, even when well-meaning family members questioned her about her marital status. “When I turned 30, all I got asked was, ‘You getting married soon?’ Or, ’Don’t you think you should be settling down now?’ I was thinking, ‘No!’ I was with the wrong person at the time. If I had settled with that person, I would be a single divorcee now. My mum always says, ‘It’s better to be single at 30 than divorced at 40.’ It’s a situation that many of her listeners find themselves in, and she wants them to know it’s OK, saying, “It was kind of frowned upon that I hadn’t got married and had children at that point. I think 40 is still young. When some people say, ‘You should have achieved this, this and this by then’, I always think, ‘Why?’”

Gemma has also had her fair share of heartache and opens up on the pod about losing her father David to a heart attack when she was just 17 – something that has helped many listeners.

“The fact that there’s so many different types of grief, shared within one episode – and not even just losing parents, it was losing pets, or you know, finding out you’ve miscarried, all these different forms of grief – helps so many people,” she says. It also helped her to process what she had gone through herself.

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“When we did the podcast, I thought, ‘Maybe I should have spoken to a professional when my dad died – those five, six years after would have been a lot easier’. Not that I didn’t cope, but I was very angry. Like, ‘He left me.’ That’s how I viewed it. Had I spoke to this lady [the professional on the podcast], she would have explained to me that it’s a stage of grief. As a 17 year old, I didn’t realise that. I just thought I was going to be a spoilt teenager for the rest of my life.”

While The Overshare is both informative and entertaining, don’t expect to hear Gemma chewing the fat with her famous pals any time soon – she feels celebrities can sometimes be reluctant to let their guard down when they hit record. “There’s not a celeb in sight, which I love,” she says. Instead, she’s all about raw, unfiltered chats and we’re here for it.

The Podcast Show, the biggest international gathering of the podcast industry, ran at The Business Design Centre in Islington, 22-23 May 2024

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