Former child star Maddie Ziegler opened up about her experience on Lifetime’s Dance Moms, which she filmed from 2011 to 2016, and said she’s recently had panic attacks after “things were coming up from the past.”
On the June 27 episode of Emily Ratajkowski’s podcast High Low with EmRata, Ziegler shared that her mom, Melissa Gisoni, apologized to her in 2022 about putting her on the show when she was only 7 years old.
“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,” the 20-year-old shared. “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.”
Ziegler’s younger sister, Mackenzie, was also on the show.
One of the big problems Ziegler faced while on the show at such a young age was how it shaped the public’s inaccurate perception of her. She was seen as “the most well-treated dancer” by her dance coach, Abby Lee Miller, and was considered a “little brat” as a result.
“When I was doing the show, in the first season I was 7, and there were male producers saying, ‘This is what you have to say,'” Ziegler claimed. “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.'”
Ziegler said something similar in an interview with Cosmopolitan, adding, “They set you up for failure. I had more stress at that age than I did once I left. I have dissociated so much from that time.”
Her dance teacher Miller, however, credits the rigorous schedule and environment with getting Ziegler to where she is today — a fixture in singer Sia’s music videos, a cast member in West Side Story and with 6 million followers on TikTok.
“I don’t think, had she not been in my studio, she would be where she is today,” Miller said in the 2017 Lifetime special Dance Moms: Abby Lee Tells All. “And I can confidently say that. I’m not gonna say that I ‘made’ anybody. I didn’t make her, her mom and dad created her, but I certainly added my two cents in.”
In May 2017, Miller was sentenced to one year and one day in prison, after being investigated for bankruptcy fraud. She served about eight months and was released to a halfway house. In 2020, Miller was accused of making racist remarks by former castmates, which resulted in her Dance Moms spin-off reality show, Abby’s Virtual Dance Off, being canceled even before it aired.
“I’ve blocked out so much of my childhood that I actually don’t know what my life was like, even just before working,” Ziegler told Ratajkowski. “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.'”
Repressed childhood memories aren’t always the result of trauma, according to a Healthline article that was edited by a psychologist. Especially if it’s not a significant moment or scene on the show, it makes sense that Ziegler might not remember it as well as viewers who were either older or who watched the scene multiple times.
“I loved competing until it became televised and the drama started,” Ziegler told Cosmopolitan. “I started to feel like, ‘It’s so peaceful outside of this world. I can’t be in this.'”
Unfortunately, Ziegler’s experience as a child star isn’t unique. A number of famous children have come out to talk about how unusual their upbringing was. Reality TV is an interesting subset of the entertainment world, particularly for child actors, because, under existing state laws, children featured on reality shows don’t qualify to be protected under child labor or performer laws.
In the interview with Cosmopolitan, Ziegler divulged that she’d never watched Dance Moms as an adult. She tried to watch one episode from an earlier season with an ex-boyfriend, but they couldn’t finish it.
“We were both like, ‘This is sad. We need to turn this off,'” she said.
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