During an appearance on the 'High Low With EmRata' podcast, the 20-year-old reveals that her mom apologized to her for what she put her through on the dancing competition show.
- Jun 28, 2023
AceShowbiz - Maddie Ziegler recalls her healing conversation with her mom. During an appearance on the "High Low With EmRata" podcast, the 20-year-old dancer revealed that her mom apologized to her for what she put her through on "Dance Moms".
"Last year, I was having a really bad panic attack and I called my mom and things were coming up from the past, and she apologized to me," Maddie told host Emily Ratajkowski. "She was like, 'I'm so sorry I put you through that.' It's so sad because she would never want to hurt us, but none of us knew how crazy it would get."
Maddie then revealed one of the negative impacts from her experience on the dancing competition show. "When I was doing the show, in the first season I was seven, there were male producers saying, 'This is what you have to say,' " she recounted. "My mom wasn't in the room, so I was like, 'OK, I just have to do whatever I'm being told.' They would say, 'Say you're the best, say you're better than everyone else, say blah blah blah.' "
She also noted that it was why she "was perceived as a little brat in the first season." She elaborated, "I remember we watched the first episode at a viewing party for the launch of the show, and I just cried because I was like, 'Oh my gosh. Everyone thinks I'm this b***h and I'm not. I'm seven!' "
"It was so weird. It helped me a lot to be able to be like, 'I can say now. I can stand up for myself.' But being so young, you don't realize all those things," she added.
During the interview, Maddie clarified claims that she's "the most well-treated dancer." She explained, "Looking back -- and a lot of people have started to say this -- it's like, 'Wow, she actually had the most pressure on her,' because she was like, 'You're my girl, so you have to lead everyone to victory every time,' which is just not sustainable," seemingly referring to her one-time dance teacher Abby Lee Miller.
Maddie then talked about how she tried to get out of her "Dance Moms" contract with the help of her mom and Sia Furler. "[My mom] really did everything to try to break our contract and pull us out, and eventually did with the help of Sia," she said. "... It was hard... We would do almost 30 episodes a season, so it consumed our lives."
She additionally said that because she started working from a very young age, she's "blocked out so much of my childhood that I actually don't know what my life was like even just before working." She shared, "It's so weird. It's weird to find out things that I did when I was younger on TikTok. I'll see people posting things of me, and I'm like, 'I don't even remember doing that.' "
In the interview, Maddie revealed that she's now focused on acting, saying that the craft has "become the forefront of what I love right now."
