Maddie Ziegler launched a successful dancing career after appearing on "Dance Moms" as a child, but she says her mother is now apologizing for the negative impact that the show has had on her.
The 20-year-old sat down with Emily Ratajkowski for a new episode of the actor's "High Low with EmRata" podcast and reflected on the emotional toll her rise to fame took on her.
“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 and she was like, ‘I’m so sorry that I put you through that,’" she explained.
Ziegler doesn't exactly look back on her time on "Dance Moms" fondly, but she made it clear that she doesn't blame her mother for what she has previously described as a "toxic environment" on the show.
“It’s so sad because it's like, she would never want to hurt us but none of us knew how crazy it would get," she said.
While recalling her experience on "Dance Moms," Ziegler revealed that the show's producers used to instruct her on how to act while filming the first season.
“There (were) male producers saying, ‘This is what you have to say.’ My mom wasn’t in the room so I was like, ‘Ok, I just have to do whatever I’m being told,’” she said. "They would say, 'Say you’re the best. Say you’re better than everyone else. Say blah blah blah.' And so I was perceived kind of like a little brat in the first season."
When the show first premiered, Ziegler said she attended a viewing party and cried after watching the way she was portrayed.
"I was like, 'Oh my gosh everyone thinks I'm this b---- and I'm not. I'm 7,'" she said. "It was so weird. It helped me a lot to be able to be like, 'I can say no. I can stand up for myself.' But being so young you don't realize all those things."
Ziegler has been dancing since she was a toddler and said she doesn't remember a time before she started honing her craft.
“I also have blocked out so much of my childhood that I actually don’t know what my life was like even just before working,” she said. “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.’”
When she was 11, Ziegler started starring in music videos with the singer Sia, and she said this was a turning point for her career.
“That’s when I was like, ‘Wait, maybe I want to act too.’ Cuz I was like, ‘I’m acting in all these videos. I’ve been playing roles in every dance I’ve done and I’ve taken that so seriously,' like diving into that at such a young age. So that was a shift for me."
These days, Ziegler tries to put less pressure on herself than she did when she was dancing competitively.
"I was such a perfectionist and I was so hard on myself and now, I'm trying to unlearn all those traits," she said. "And it’s an ongoing battle cuz I like some of the traits that I had when I was little cuz I was so determined and I was so strong-headed about everything. But now, I'm also like, 'It's OK if I mess up. It's not the end of the world."