'Why did you keep doing it?': Abby Lee Miller responds to Maddie Ziegler's 'Dance Moms' toxic
Abby Lee Miller responded after former ‘Dance Moms’ star Maddie Ziegler claimed the reality show was a ‘toxic’ environment. In a YouTube video posted on Wednesday, June 15, the former ‘Abby's Ultimate Dance Competition’ judge, 56, argued, “What I don’t understand [about] the pressure, the ‘toxic’ situation — if it was so toxic, why did you keep doing it? I had to [and] I tried to quit many a time and I was forced to come back to set because I signed a contract.”
“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. I thought [Maddie] wanted to be there. 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,” Miller added.
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Earlier, Ziegler, 19, reflected on her ‘Dance Moms’ days during a Cosmopolitan interview, “[Abby] was distraught [when I left]. For the longest time, we felt so guilty. She trained me, she helped me, but also, I knew I would be OK 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. I feel at peace. 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."
The reality TV show, which aired on Lifetime for eight seasons, debuted in 2011 and followed the ALDC's junior elite competition team's weekly schedule as well as their mothers' efforts to get them to the top of the pyramid. According to the People, Maddie and Mackenzie, now 18 years old, and their mother, Melissa Gisoni, quit ‘Dance Moms’ in December 2015 after six seasons of dancing on the show. Miller locked herself in an office and wept throughout their tumultuous farewell, which was caught on tape. Since then, the family has been open about their feelings against Miller.
The former Abby's Studio Rescue star also said in the YouTube video that her former student felt at home in the ALDC studio, which was where everybody knew her name before she became famous. Miller added, referring to Maddie as a ‘kid that I loved,’ “I was fighting for everything, for these kids to be the best that they could be on television. I know that what I did for Maddie, with Maddie, helped her succeed.” "Maddie wanted to win. She wanted to be the best. She was a perfectionist. She loved to dance. That's where she was at home. That's where everybody knew her name. Now the whole world knows her name," she added.
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