Maddie Ziegler has certainly put a lot of distance between her Dance Moms days. While the 20-year-old has expressed gratitude for the platform that the Lifetime show gave her, she’s also vowed never to do another reality TV show again. These days, Ziegler is hyperfocused on her acting career. In fact, she has managed to secure leading lady status in her upcoming film, Bloody Hell. But every so often Ziegler will reflect on her Dance Moms experiences and how she and her castmates were often manipulated by the show’s producers.
Maddie Ziegler was on six seasons of ‘Dance Moms’ before she quit
Ziegler was only eight when she joined the Dance Moms cast with her little sister, Kenzie Ziegler, and mom, Melissa Gisoni. The family had no idea how much their decision to do the show would change the course of their lives. Initially pitched as a short docuseries, the family never thought they’d stay on the show for six seasons. Unfortunately, it took a while before Maddie and her family could get out of their contracts and finally quit the show for good.
How the ‘Dance Mom’s producers deliberately caused drama for the show
Maddie has been candid about how stressful the show was for her. And while a lot of the Dance Moms drama was real, some of it was scripted by the producers. The producers would manipulate situations to encourage fighting. Some former members of the cast have even shared that the producers would threaten to withold paychecks and/or not let the mothers leave until they fought with one another.
Back in 2015, Maddie gave an interview with USA Today and dropped some insider info about Dance Moms. She explained how the producers often manipulated a lot of the drama that was shown on the show. “The producers set it up to make us all yell at each other,” the dancer explained. “You know how I said that moms do fight? The moms have a fake fight sometimes. Afterward, they just start talking and laugh about it.”
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Maddie explained how she was manipulated by the ‘Dance Moms’ producers in her interviews
Of course, 2015 wasn’t the last time that Maddie called out the Dance Moms producers. In a 2022 interview with Cosmopolitan, the West Side Story alum spoke openly about how she was portrayed on the show. She shared that she was told to say certain things so that the producers could then portray her in a negative light. This led to The Fallout actor receiving no small amount of hate in the fandom despite being a young child.
“People thought I was a brat because, in all my interviews, I would say, ‘I’m the best. I know I’m going to win,’” Maddie recalled. “But that’s because the producer was telling me to say that. I don’t think I’m better than everyone else. I was just doing whatever they told me to do because I thought that’s what you did. They set you up for failure.”
Other members of the ‘Dance Moms’ cast have called out the producers also
Maddie certainly isn’t the first or only member of the Dance Moms cast to talk openly about the havoc the producers wreaked on the cast. Even Abby Lee Miller has shared that the show became over-the-top in future seasons as it became more heavily produced. Fortunately, Maddie and Kenzie got out of the toxic environment of the reality TV show and have found success elsewhere in the world of entertainment.
