When it comes to juggling her day-to-day life, Gemma Atkinson is a pro – balancing her busy career with being a working mum of two. And she opens up to Closer about how she handles parenting solo while fiancé Gorka Marquez is away.
Gemma, 39, first met Strictly star Gorka, 33, back in 2017, with the professional dancer getting down on one knee in 2021. The pair are now proud parents to daughter Mia, four, and son Thiago, one. But with Gorka busy with Strictly and touring, Gemma has got used to coping on her own.
She reveals, “Gorka works away a lot. People always go, ‘How does that even work?’ I think that’s why it works! It’s either out of sight and out of mind, or absence makes the heart grow fonder. I get asked a lot, ‘How do you do that on your own with the kids?’ It’s all we’ve known in our relationship. I’m like, ‘How do you live with someone 24/7 and see them all the time?’”
Despite now being a mum of two, Gemma – who turns 40 in November – also shares how her picture-perfect family life wasn’t something she ever expected.
She says, “When I turned 30, all I got asked was, ‘Are you getting married soon? Don’t you think you should be settling down?’ 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,” Gemma adds, “Whereas everyone else in the family used to give me the head tilt and say, ‘You’re still single? Not found anyone?’ So many people have said to me they get the same. Instead of celebrating the fact that you’ve had 30 years, you’ve got a great job, great friends and you’re happy and healthy, it was frowned upon that I hadn’t got married and had children. I think 40 is still young!”
Last year, Gemma launched The Overshare podcast – a show focused on real people, with real stories. Gemma explains, “There’s not a celeb in sight, which I love. I just think whenever I’ve been on a podcast, my agent is like, ‘Is there anything you don’t want to be asked?’ or, ‘You can edit that out’. I was happy for everyone who took part in The Overshare, because it was their story.”
Filled with jaw-dropping stories, the episodes sometimes tap into Gemma’s own experiences. In one emotional episode, the star delves into grief – something she knows all too well, having lost her father.
Opening up about grief, the former Hollyoaks star shares, “I lost my dad when I was 17. He just dropped dead of a heart attack. I think it’s really hard to navigate unless you’ve been through it. I had women message me that their partner had passed away and their child was struggling, so they’d been advised to listen to that episode [of the podcast].”
She adds, “Regardless of age, background or job, we all experience grief. It’s something no one can escape, we’re all going to lose someone. You’re going to have to work through it, because life goes on. The fact there’s so many different types of grief shared within one episode – losing pets, or finding out you’ve miscarried. All these different forms of grief in one episode helps so many people.”
Along with supporting listeners, Gemma shares that the podcast episode also helped her come to terms with her own journey. She says, “When we did the podcast, I thought maybe I should have spoken to a professional when my dad died, and then those five or six years after would have been easier. I was very angry. He’d left me – that’s how I viewed it. As a 17-year-old, I didn’t realise it was grief.”
And, above all, the star says a positive mindset is key. She says, “Whatever I’m going through, I always try to look for a positive. There’s always someone worse off than you. It made me understand that it happens to everybody at some stage – the fun stuff, the embarrassing stuff, the grief stuff. It’s all part of life and part of living. We all experience it.”
The Podcast Show, the biggest international gathering of the podcast industry, ran at The Business Design Centre in Islington from 22 to 23 May 2024