Abby Lee Miller Responds To Maddie Ziegler’s Claim That “Dance Moms” Was Toxic

Anyone who has watched even ten seconds of Lifetime’s metaphorical cry for help Dance Moms has probably considered calling up Poison Control to ask if the series has been added to any list of harmful toxic substances. Because Dance Moms was rife with moments that would make a person wonder how much income Abby Lee Miller would inevitably generate for the therapy industry (although that’s not a financial estimate I’d trust Abby to calculate, given her history with money fraud). Maddie Ziegler, arguably one of Dance Mom’s most famous child dancers next to JoJo Siwa, has spoken out about the show that kick-started her cha-cha-cha to fame, and it’s a less than flattering profile of the show. But if you ask Abby about it, Abby will bust out a little interpretive dance called the confused head-scratcher, because she has no idea what Maddie is talking about.

Earlier this week, 19-year-old Maddie spoke to Cosmopolitan about her experience on the show and her relationship with her former dance coach, 56-year-old Abby Lee Miller. Maddie, her sister Mackenzie, and their mom Melissa Ziegler-Gisoni, were on Dance Moms from seasons 1 to 6, when they all left for greener pastures. Well, okay, some of those pastures smelled of manure, but the point is Maddie got too successful for the show, and it was time for her to leave. But also, even without the success, it sounds like Maddie was ready to get as far away from the Abby Lee Dance Company as humanly possible.

“My family and I really tried to leave for the last three seasons. But when you’re in a contract, it’s really hard. Eventually, I finally got out. [Abby Lee Miller] was distraught. For the longest time, we felt so guilty. She trained me, she helped me, but also, I knew I would be okay without her and I was sick of being in a toxic environment. I was like, ‘This is not for me. I can’t do this.’ I haven’t spoken to her since.” Maddie does not plan on talking to Miller ever again. “I feel at peace,” she says. “Definitely.”

Maddie also said that she never watched the show, except to show her boyfriend a bit of it, but they both quickly turned it off when they realized how “sad” it was. She added that she believes she came off looking like a brat during the Dance Moms years, but blames it on production, claiming that they set her up “for failure” by encouraging her to be as braggy and arrogant as possible in interviews. She says she has had to “unlearn” a lot of the behaviors taught to her by Abby during her time on Dance Moms, like seeing everyone as competition, or feeling like a loser if she didn’t win.

People magazine says that Abby decided to come to her own defense on YouTube, where she posted a video rebuttal to Maddie’s claims. Abby sings some of her more classic hits such as Victim Blaming, Gaslighting, Chronic Narcissism, and the always popular, Accusations of Lying.

“What I don’t understand [about] the pressure, the ‘toxic’ situation — if it was so toxic, why did you keep doing it?”…Ziegler told Cosmo she “really tried to leave for the last three seasons” of her six-season run on the Lifetime show, Miller said in her video: “Newsflash: the kids in the original cast never had a contract. The moms had a contract, but the kids, well, they were just kind of there on a handshake.”

“If she said, ‘I don’t want to go, I’m not going,’ kicking and screaming, stomping her feet, I’m sure her mother wouldn’t have brought her — or she would have come and talked to me about it. She never did that.”

Saying that Ziegler “was at at home” in her Pennsylvania studio and “that’s where everybody knew her name,” Miller added, “Now the whole world knows her name.”

Later on, Abby called up TMZ and decided to play the victim, claiming that Maddie is being just so thoughtless and disrespectful to a woman who practically gave Maddie her life on a silver platter. via People:

“Spending hours, days, weeks and years together in a crazy reality TV show environment, we became like family. Sadly, it’s always the ones you do the most for that kick you in the can-can.”

In the video, she questioned whether a teen like Ziegler or her costars could understand what Miller has gone through in the last several years. “I don’t think she realizes what I went through in prison, what I went through in the hospital, what chemo’s all about, what being in a wheelchair is like,” she said.

Abby did a stint in prison for bankruptcy fraud, and as diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2018. Here’s Abby fighting with a teenager, via YouTube video:

Hmmm…which side to be on in this fight. Well, let’s see – any time I think of Abby Lee Miller, I glance at the way-too-old age on my driver’s license and remember I’m a piss-poor dancer with zero rhythm, and think, “There but for the grace of god go I.” On the other hand. Wait, there is no other hand. Abby can’t deny Maddie’s claim that she finally feels at peace. There are disturbed screech owls and pavement-splintering jackhammers that sound more soothing than hearing Abby’s voice croak: “MADDIE!”

Pic: INSTARimages