Holly Willoughby has lost her superpower

Holly Willoughby’s great talent during her 14 years on This Morning was her likeability. Fronting an institution famous for careering between subjects as discordant as sex with ghosts, ketamine addiction and the Tory cabinet, she was intuitive and in control, able to be human and sincere when the occasion demanded it, and silly, giggly and companionable at every opportunity that required some relief. She was easy to watch, and took the edge off. But so much curdled after “queuegate”, the Phillip Schofield affair and the show’s parodic response, the disgrace of its regular chef Gino D’Acampo, and rumours of the hosts’ backstage iciness, that all the “still hungover after the National Television Awards” shtick lost its charm. Since she left in 2023, in the wake of Schofield and a traumatising foiled plot to rape, kidnap and murder her, it has become easy to forget just how good she was. Energetic, versatile, in command – but self-effacing, too, and with a mischievous streak and a love of innuendo and going off-script. An old-fashioned presenter, whose personal brand was not really having one at all. That just won’t cut it in 2026, especially when you’re trying to relaunch your career on YouTube. In this economy, it needs to be all about you. Success depends on audiences and algorithms- highly engaged fanbases of the type that generalists like Willoughby, trained to be professional and keep their opinions to themselves, have never built. And so, watching Willoughby’s new YouTube lifestyle series Together, you can practically hear some highly paid brand consultancy goading her from the sidelines to impress a personality upon us. “Swear!” “Burst into giggles!” “Have a glass of wine!” “Make it a screwtop!” – the endearing glimpses of the “real Holly” that made her popular on a high-stakes, squeaky-clean, polished, ITV daytime are now supposed to be the foundation of her personal brand. Unfortunately, rather than “cheeky” and “girl next door”, it all feels forced and rehearsed on a prerecorded web series with absolutely no jeopardy. But there is some jeopardy with this venture – Willoughby’s career is hanging on it. This twice-weekly series, which repackages elements of a magazine show like This Morning – human interest interviews, fashion, wellness, food – into a slightly longer format, needs to work, to prove she can go it alone and to repair her reputation in the good graces of the public. Which brings me to the second misfire from that highly paid brand consultancy, which must have advised her to launch with a guest so popular they guarantee you a hit: Stanley Tucci. Tucci making pasta! Who doesn’t fancy Tucci? What could go wrong? What could be more crowd-pleasing? He does it on Instagram, he does it on his travel series, he does it on every other lifestyle or cookery programme on British television in the past 10 years. In fact, the man never stops making pasta – and so Together opens with 50 minutes of him coaching Willoughby through a fried courgette spaghetti recipe that has already gone viral several times on the internet and which requires only about four ingredients. Bulletproof! Willoughby’s new studio – and show – feel dated (Photo: Karis Kennedy/Holly Willoughby Together/PA) If you have watched television in the last five years, then you have seen this before. All of it. Tucci’s expensive olive oil, Tucci’s pasta water, Tucci’s routine outrage at the very notion of snapping spaghetti in half so that it fits in a saucepan. It isn’t just repetitive and unimaginative, but a bizarre way to launch a new series that is supposed to be centred around the appeal of a media personality, because when Tucci is in the house the only personality he is interested in is his own. He so dominates every engagement that I have no choice but to assume the strategy here was to posit Willoughby as his direct and relatable opposite: he the sophisticated gourmand, she the unfussy everywoman more comfortable “listening to Katy Perry eating a kebab”. Never mind that both are multi-millionaires who live in mansions in south-west London and make clear throughout much of their conversation how much time they have spent together socially alongside other rich, famous lovers and friends. That’s the thing here – Together misunderstands relatability by trying to engineer it. Its very first scenes feature Willoughby sniffing the kitchen, complaining that it smells of sausages, promising that she washed her hair since she last cooked, as a way of demonstrating just how normal and familiar she still is. It is filmed in a studio set up as an open-plan kitchen and living room, replete with a large, irksome team of camera crew and producers, who, as has become compulsory across TV and podcasting, laugh loudly and interject regularly and are seen reflected in the oven or in zoomed-out shots. Just to remind everybody how rough and ready and authentic this new Willoughby project is, now that she is unleashed from a mainstream broadcaster. But what’s unleashed when your new series feels like an attempt to cash in on your own “best bits” supercut from This Morning? Willoughby created a meme in 2010 when she suggested adding ham to a carbonara, prompting the response from D’Acampo, “If my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike”. Here she attempts to lean again into that culinary cluelessness by presenting Tucci with Fray Bentos pies and Greggs sausage rolls, and asking him whether he’d ever cut a pizza with scissors. It’s overdone and dated: the tired old “Brits are bad cooks” routine is long over. She also attempts to stir up a bit of gentle debate with quickfire questions about whether bag, milk or water goes in first when making a cup of tea, or about Tucci’s favourite type of potatoes: the kinds of unenlightening prompts you might expect from a panicked host trying to salvage a dinner party gone sour, not a seasoned TV presenter. Willoughby is capable of better than this. Perhaps this would work if Willoughby was still on daytime. She still comes across as engaging, lively, perfectly light touch and good fun – that’s what made her such good value back when she had to flit between subjects and to hook people who were flicking between channels. But as she said herself in a recent interview: “On this new platform, people find you and come to you because they’re interested in you. I’m not being forced upon anyone.” YouTube – whose primary users do not easily cross over with the This Morning demographic – relies on people coming to her directly and if she’s not offering anything different, taking any risks, or exposing enough of herself, I’m not confident they’ll stay. Rebranding oneself in the “lifestyle” space is not as simple as just talking food and fashion. As Meghan Markle learnt – or demonstrably did not – with her Netflix embarrassment, With Love, Meghan, unless you’re a real expert at something and are willing to offer up your real life as well as your talent for public consumption, it is very hard to have people connect with you, especially on YouTube, a place which runs on oversharing. The public either wants honest, unfiltered imperfection or glamour and something to aspire to. Willoughby still hasn’t decided which she wants to be. Together is proof that her superpower was always her ability to be professional, not a personality.