Abby Lee Miller Feudster (Dance Moms) | 61

Sydney, would you consider yourself a dancer? Uh, I would consider myself a mover. Okay, I guess that counts. I can dance. I danced when I was younger and then I stopped around the age where it's good to stop, which is like ten, because you have all the flexibility and then they don't start screaming at you about your body yet. So if you couldn't guess, today we're getting into some dance drama.

And we're gonna start off with probably my favorite moment of reality television ever. And I haven't even seen all of this show, but I've seen this clip on the internet on repeat, and I'm obsessed with it. It comes from season eight of Dance Moms. Is it the reversing wheelchair? It is that. It is that moment. So, for those who don't know, in this particular episode, we're at this high stakes dance competition for tween and teenage girls.

And on one side is the Abbey Lee Miller Dance Company, aka A-L-D-C. It's led by Abbey Lee Miller herself. Who is, if you know anything about her or have been on the internet in the past 10 years, you may be familiar. She is notorious for being an incredibly brutal coach, to put it mildly. They need to make a whole new section of the DSM for. Yeah. She is fascinating. Abby Lee Miller induced traumas.

But at this particular dance competition, there's the Abbey Lee Miller dance company on one side. On the other side, there's this company called Studio 19. Or some former ALDC dancers and moms defected because they just couldn't stand Abby any longer. Mm-hmm. It's pretty understandable. I mean, Abby yells at, insults, belittles. All of her dancers, basically, and she's even worse to the moms. Right. So in this episode we have studio nineteen. They're on stage performing.

Abby rolls up in the audience in her wheelchair and she starts texting. And the woman who owns Studio 19 doesn't like that. So she gets up and taps Abby on the shoulder and let's just watch the clip and you can describe Abby's reaction. So if you didn't catch that, the owner of Studio 19 comes over Abby's shoulder and goes. You preach theater etiquette to my kids, put your phone away. And Abby jumps a little bit, and then she just silently, with a very neutral face, starts.

Reversing the wheelchair all the way down the aisle as the music plays. Yeah, we'll sort of unpack more of that clip, but She backs away, tells someone in the back that she's going to bask in Robins. But in reality, she's going to file a police report at the police station, you know, because this woman has accosted her.

Even though all she does is say, like, put your phone away. Yeah, no, Matt, that's equivalent to punching her straight in the face. Also, if I remember correctly, not the only time that Abby threatens to have someone arrested. simply for saying something to her that she doesn't like. And it probably won't be the last time. We can watch the rest of the clip. It is truly the funniest Yes.

rest of this moment. Abby, what are you doing? I'm filing a police report. Nobody is going to verbally assault me at a dance competition. My only choice was to remove myself from a situation that could escalate to something more. I'm I'm putting a stop to this. So that clip involves Abby just like speeding down the street and the producers, I guess, not being able to find her. Right. Like they lose sight of her apparently. I mean she is

Hauling ass in that motorized wheelchair. Absolutely. The funniest part is they end up outside of the midtown police precinct. And one of the producers is like, Where is she? And it's like a horror movie where she just like moves behind him in the frame. She pops out from behind a car and she Uh after this kind of moment they cut away to this interview.

Where Abby says, I had to go to the police station and fill out a report to keep that other dance studio away from my team. I will do whatever it takes to help the ALDC win that national title. I mean, I believe her. She does not exaggerate. She will literally do just about anything to be the best. Even to the detriment of her own dancers. I feel like especially to the detriment of her own dancers. Yeah. From Wondery, I'm Matt Belisai. And I'm Sydney Battle. Hell.

Dance Mom's, the reality TV show, thrived on rivalries. I mean, that's kind of all reality television. But Dance Moms especially was so dramatic. There were dancers versus dancers, moms versus moms, and as we just Dance studios versus dance studios, the police. It makes you wonder like, was there a gas leak in this dance studio?

Dance Mom's the show was just like this hotbed for anger. And obviously, some of that rivalry and drama was manufactured, some is based more in reality. But at the center of all of it, It is Abby Lee Miller, who was truly terrible to a lot. of people. But the question is sort of how much of Abbey Lee Miller's terribleness was genuinely her? How much was it producers egging her on for the sake of reality TV? And how did all of us watching at home

play a part in making Abbey Lee Miller so infamous. It's really interesting that you say that because this is the one show, weirdly enough, where I never think about the producers encouraging her. Like I think I always watched and I was like, that's Just her. I'm interested to learn about moments that might have been blown up by other people. And yeah, we'll also see, you know, Abby got away with a lot on her show.

Coming back to bite her in the ass now. Her dancers have gotten older, times have changed, and Abby's getting called out for a lot of her. and monstrous coaching tactics. We're gonna get into all of it. What it means for everybody involved. This is Abbey Lee Miller, Feudster. Okay, so all the way back in 2011, Lifetime debuts their newest reality show. Yes, Lifetime Television Network. TV for women. TV for women. It means murder and yelling.

So Dance Moms is the lifetime reality show and it's all about this dance studio in Pittsburgh of all places run by Abbey Lee Miller. Mm-hmm. And Abbey Lee Miller is this intense Dance coach, to put it nicely, here is how she describes her teaching style in the very first episode of Dance Moms. Privacy of my studio. Yeah, rock solid rationale just really makes total sense. And that's like from the outside. It's not like

Oh, reality TV like turned this woman into this heartless monster. No, that was her from the beginning. She's been this way. Yeah. I also love that just baseline, she's like, Your child will be crying. Oh yeah, she sets it up up top. I mean she reminds me of theater teachers that think that they have to break

a student to make them better. Yeah, I mean she kind of truly believes that this is how things need to be done. And her dancers are all between the ages of six and thirteen at the start of the show. And she makes them cry all the time. She is obnoxious, she's aggressive, oftentimes she's just downright cruel. For example, after each competition,

She ranks her girls on a pyramid. Oh yes. And tells each of them what they did wrong in their last performance and basically shames them in front of each other. We've got a clip of that. This is just one of many, many instances of her doing the pyramid thing to set this scene. So Abby is addressing the dancers. The moms are also in the room. And they are ready to jump in and defend their daughters and obviously also provide drama. That's the show.

And one of the moms is telling Abby that she didn't choreograph a difficult enough dance for her daughter to be able to win. It wasn't competitive enough. Right. So the more complicated the routine, the higher you score if you do well in it. And so this mom was mad that this particular routine wasn't difficult enough. And they get into a shouting match. Here's that clip. She can't do anything more difficult! She can! Give her let her job!

She can't do ten pirouettes, you know that! Then shut your mouth. I mean, it's so aggressive. It really is. And for context, this is from one of the later seasons. And if I remember correctly, that girl is like very shy and very quiet and Kind of just like minds your own business. And so In that clip, she almost immediately starts crying. Right. Yeah. She doesn't even speak in the clip. No. But the camera keeps cutting back to her as her like lip. Yeah.

It's interesting that like the moms are there having such big opinion on the way that she's running things. It's not just that Abbey Lee Miller is this tyrant. Of a teacher. There's also these super opinionated moms, and the kids are just kind of like the rope in this tug of war.

Right. And some version of this exists, I think, in any extracurricular. The parents are gonna have opinions. Right. I was on an all-girls Christian volleyball team and one of the moms made the coach cry. Yeah, that sounds about right. Why were you? Ha ha ha. There wasn't a rule that boys couldn't be on the team, but it was like an all-girls church group and then they like enlisted me because a friend of mine was in it. Oh. Anyway.

So why did all of these moms and children put up with this? Well, the children were forced to by their parents, but why did the parents put up with this? I mean, the truth is the mothers of these dancers believed that Abby was the key to helping their daughters achieve Fame and success. They say it over and over again in the series. Despite her questionable teaching style, Abby does produce winners. Here's this clip of Abby speaking on that point.

know me. They know Abby Lee because I produce stars. I produce it. Some of them as if they were my own. Some of them Some of them as if they were my own. The thing is, for as many professional dancers as she's made, how many has she broken? Probably all of them. True. That's the funny thing is that the one that is kind of still on her side is JoJo Siwa, who is broken. Yeah. But just

In a completely different way. I think it's a really generous interpretation for you to say that the moms just really thought Abby could get their daughters. A professional career because I think after a certain point, it definitely became about the money they got from the show. And

the fame they got from the show. Yeah. I mean, one of the kind of lingering questions throughout all of this drama is why do these people stay a part of the dance company and a part of the show and I think it's definitely the show part of it. That probably compels a lot of them not to leave. But obviously, Abbey Lee Miller by herself does not make a show. The young girls that are dancing for her are obviously the main cast members, but it's their tiger stage moms who really serve up.

The drama against Abby. So there is one mom in particular who Abby has a lot of issues with, and that is Kelly Hyland, who is the mother of Brooke and Paige Hyland. And Abby and Kelly go way back. Kelly was actually one of Abby's very first students. That is a really fascinating dynamic to watch on the show. Right. Because they're literally only a few years apart in AIDS.

When Abby was 14, she led a dance team at her own mother's studio. Right. Her mom had a studio. And Kelly Highland was on that team. So eventually when Kelly's own daughters get into dance. She brings them to the Abbey Lee Miller Dance Company long before Dance Moms was. A thing. But that means Kelly was well aware of Abby's coaching style. She knew what. She was signing them up for. Exactly. But according to a later lawsuit that gets filed, because that's where this ends up.

Once the filming for Dance Mom started, Kelly realized that the kids on the show were being subjected to abusive and unlawful working conditions. That is, in quotes. Hmm. And she claims that she tried to say something through her lawyer, but that she was told they were under contract and she would be sued for everything she owned if she attempted to back out of the contract. That's really interesting because I'm just now remembering that when the show starts.

If I recall correctly, Kelly is one of the more affluent moms. And I feel like that gave her a little more power. Like maybe she felt a little more comfortable fighting back or going to a lawyer and having the lawyer say something. Or, you know, pushing against production or Abbey.

Because she didn't really depend on the show for financial stability. Right. So Kelly and her girls allegedly are forced to stay on the show, and then things just get worse as the seasons go on. Kelly alleges that Abby is Verbally abusive to everyone on set, that she makes people cry, she calls them emotionally weak. Things get so bad that her daughter Paige starts having panic attacks. The tension is high.

So one day when Abby criticizes Brooke for not being able to do a specific kind of spin, Kelly loses it. She screams at Abby in front of the cameras, and the two of them get into this big fight, which ends with this exchange. You've been doing it too long. Look in the mirror, girlfriend. Look in the mirror. Please. Don't eat me, Abby. It is unfortunate they did used to make a lot of fat phobic. Joke. went back into a corner in an argument with Abby.

That did not age well. No. I mean it's just a testament to like how dirty things got like so quickly. Despite that, it takes until a season four showdown for Kelly to hit her breaking point with Abby. It starts with Abby once again criticizing Kelly's 15-year-old daughter, Brooke, saying that Brooke looks miserable. Because she was. She probably definitely was miserable. And Kelly takes this as Abby saying that she wants to replace Brooke in the upcoming dance.

And the two get into this screaming match, which escalates very quickly. Here is a snippet of that. Listen! I said, Brooke, is your mother speaking for you? Do you want to be in my face? Girls out the room. Yeah, you winning. Out the room. Get away from me. Out the room. Get away from me. Get out the room. Girls, out of the room. Girls, out of the room. Out on the road.

Okay, wow, wow, so much to describe. Kelly is pointing her finger in Abby's face and then Abby pretends she's going to bite it, literally like lunges at it with her teeth a few times. And Kelly slaps her in the face and then grabs her hair and pulls, and all of the girls. are still in the room and you hear the one sane mother at the back of the room, Holly, going

Girls out of the room. Out of the room. But like the worst of the fight has already happened. Right. Yeah. It's gotten physical already. Yeah. Abby she has a lot of bark. And she doesn't have much bite because immediately after Kelly gets physical, Abby backs off of her. And then she does go into another room and decides to file a police report about the incident. So this is where yet another police report comes in. Wow.

Can I ask? This lawsuit ended up going away, right? Well, actually Kelly was arrested and charged with assault and she was released without bail But there was an arraignment and then eventually like a year and a half later the charges get dropped. Oh my god. I don't think I ever knew that. I didn't know that she was arrested. Yeah, I mean, I guess it goes away after a year or whatever, but like Enough of an impact that yeah, she got arrested and charged and all of that.

So after that fight, Kelly and her daughters leave the show entirely.

And then Kelly returns fire and sues Abby. Oh. And she says that she's suffered emotional distress, anxiety, frustration, anger, which I didn't even know you could sue someone for. You can sue someone for making you angry. Yeah. It's America. You could sue anybody for anything, I guess. I love a litigious country. Yeah. The list included humiliation and anguish, and she wants to be paid exemplary and punitive damages.

How do you calculate that? You humiliated me, give me$10,000. And then to top it all off, eight months after Kelly files her suit, her 13-year-old daughter Paige also sues out. Yeah, and that was Paige's decision for sure. Paige did that by herself. Just like her mom, Paige also claims that she suffered emotional abuse. at the Abby Lee Miller Dance Company. And specifically, she brings up this time during the filming of season two when Abby supposedly

threw a chair at her and uh Paige was so scared that she ran out of the room. Mm-hmm. A judge ends up watching footage of that moment from the show. So Abby is pissed off that Kelly forgot to put stoppers on a chair that Paige is using for a dance. Do we have this clip? Yeah, we have a clip. Thank God. Let's watch it. You don't need him for the competition. I told you to do it for today.

Look at that language. Doesn't that embarrass you? That she has to use language like that? That's a what a truck driver uses. You're finished. Next. This features my favorite version of Abby, which is Mickey Mouse voice Abby. Don't you hate when your mother does that? That's truck driver language. Like when she goes really high. So for the listeners. She doesn't throw the chair at Paige so much as Paige is standing right next to her and she lifts up a chair and throws it on the ground.

Right. It's more of a kind of aggressive dropping. Yeah. And then Paige's mom flips her the bird a few times and says like F you and then Abby does what she does very well, which is gaslighting. And immediately emotionally manipulates Paige by being like, Isn't your mother embarrassing you? Acting this way. Yeah. If the basis of the lawsuit was that they use their children as like

like emotional bombs in um ego war between them, like I think the judge would have been like, yeah, you're both going to jail. That judge definitely watched the footage and was like, oh, they're all a little off. I mean the judge did have to watch that clip, and unfortunately for Paige and her mom, the judge decided that.

There's no reasonable way Paige could legitimately fear being injured by her instructor. That judge should have had to sit down and watch the first two seasons before making that ruling because he would then know that. I would not be surprised if those girls have some kind of PTSD. But yeah, the judge ends up striking down the case.

There's no sufficient evidence to back up the claim that this is not the last legal predicament that Abby finds herself in, and next time she's gonna face some real consequences. Oh. It's about time that life throws a chair at Abbey Lee Miller. Hello, I'm Matt Ford. And I'm Alice Levine. And we're the hosts of British Scandal. Now, Britain loves a royal scandal. Abdications, affairs,

We've had the lot. But this series is about two brothers. Raised in palaces bound by tragedy, supposed to be inseparable. Barely speaking. Was it jealousy, the press? Or was this royal rift always inevitable? This is the story of Harry and Wills and the scandal that split the House of Wills. Follow British Scandal wherever you get your podcasts or listen early and ad-free on Audible.

All right, Sydney. So Abbey Lee Miller has just faced off in court with the Highlands, both Kelly and her daughter Paige. Paige's suit got dismissed in the summer of 2015. And then three months later, Kelly settles her suit. And the settlement says that the show can keep using her and her daughter's images in reruns. And in exchange, the production pays Kelly a whopping seventeen thousand five hundred dollars to replace the floors in her home, which

I guess got damaged during the production. Okay. Yeah, it seems like that is the extent of the settlement, which like I think I would keep to myself. Yeah. I'd just be like we settled for an undisclosed sum. Right. I wouldn't tell people that. But brace yourself because the same month that Kelly drops her lawsuit, Abby is hit with a federal indictment for bankruptcy fraud.

Because apparently before Dance Mom started, Abby filed for bankruptcy and tried to reorganize her dance studio business. But when she did that, she hid a lot of her income from the IRS. Something around like Seven hundred and fifty five thousand dollars. Oh my god. Yeah, turns out you're not allowed to do that. So

Facing five years in prison, up to five million dollars in fines. Eventually she pleads guilty. And in May 2017, nearly two years after the indictment first came down, she was sentenced to 300. And 66 days in prison. Wow. So yeah, she has to spend a year and a day in prison. She also has to pay around$160,000.

Up until this point, she was still filming Dance Moms, but after the sentence comes down and she gets ready to to go to prison, the show ends. The thing is though, Abby only ends up spending eight and a half months in prison. And then she's released early. So they probably could have just gone on a long hiatus. Probably, but I feel like maybe people were reaching their breaking point with her. Like they were finally realizing, Oh, are we just watching

Kids be terrorized. Yeah, I mean, I do think it's interesting that this genre of reality television was pretty big. And the early 2000s, like 2010s, Gordon Ramsay, Simon Cowell, just usually a mean British person. And They were more palatable, I guess, because of their accents, but I just feel like post-Trump, I think people started getting a little sick of seeing like just outright monsters on television, especially if they become president.

I mean true. I think this was around when people started using words like canceled and people were starting to remember that the one black girl on the team, Nia, was only ever given ethnic dances and that she would be like rarely given a solo and one of her solo characters was called La Quifa and then Abby would yell at this girl and be like, Why aren't you winning? And it's like because she's going out to a song where the lyrics are They call me La Kuifa. They call me Laquifa.

Yeah. Well, it's safe to say, yeah, Abby Lee Miller was kind of overstaying her reality television welcome a little bit. And so she spends eight and a half months in prison. She gets released early. But her life doesn't get a whole lot better because not long after she gets out of jail, she is diagnosed with Burkett lymphoma, which is this rare and aggressive form of cancer. And then there's just this.

series of other health scares, including a slipped vertebra, and then she ends up being wheelchair bound. I see. I mean, that's a lot to happen to one person in a very short period of time. Right. And to make matters worse. And for her personally, a lot of her former dancers basically abandoned her. She kind of assumed that they would rally to her side. But instead they just keep their distance, and that really pissed her off. Good for them. I'm glad they got out.

Yeah, there's a lot of I think like mommy issue stuff happening here in that Abbey Lee Miller kind of sees herself as this maternal figure to these girls and expects them. to show her that kind of motherly love? Oh yeah. Well, especially because, you know, the manipulation goes both ways. The moms would definitely try to manipulate Abby. The lines were very blurred. There were no boundaries. And so I'm not surprised that weird relationships formed.

Okay, so like we said, Dance Moms ended in 2017 after Abby was sentenced to her time in jail. But eventually it comes back for a final eighth season that airs in 2019. Once Abby is back in action. But it's not the same. Abby's absence has given some of her dancers and their mothers the confidence to speak out against her. And she kind of no longer pulls all of the strings in this world.

I think, you know, it's sort of like, oh, this woman is fallible and she's taken a few L's and now we can kind of circle her and kick her while she's down, I think. So yeah, there are a lot of former dancers Who come out around this time and just kind of dump on Abby. There's Nia Sue, who's the longest running cast member of the ALDC, who says that one big thing that she learned from Abby was how to deal with difficult people. She means races.

Yeah that tracks. She's like I don't think I'll reconcile with Abby anytime soon. And then there's also one of the moms, Adriana Smith, calls out Abby for a bunch of racist remarks. Including when Abby said her daughter was on the team because they needed a sprinkler. Yeah. Unsurprising then that a lot of these girls are kind of like, yeah, I I'm not gonna come to her side while she's dealing with shit. Yeah. Oh my god, those poor girls. But yeah, I mean Abby is

hurt by what her old dancers are saying about her. She still feels like she is responsible for their fame and success.

And they should be thanking her instead of dragging her. That's so Crazy. It is crazy behavior. And if anyone is going to hold a grudge about this, it's Abby. Four years after she gets out of prison. sits down with Entertainment Tonight and she calls out everyone who cut off contact with her during her time in prison. We have this quote that she gives Entertainment Tonight. Do you want to read it for us?

Oh, of course I do. Shame on you. Shame on you after what I did for you, for your children. Helped make you a lot of money. You couldn't come to visit me for eight and a half months. You couldn't send a card, a letter. I was getting mail from children in other countries, and somehow 12 and 13-year-old little girls were finding the address.

They were getting their cards and letters to me, and people here that I taught their children before the television show, they were very happy customers before Dance Moms, and then during it they were starved. They were making money. They were on top of the world. And you're just going to dump me?

Yeah, babe, and that should tell you a lot. Yeah, it does seem like rather than kind of reflecting on what that reaction means about her and her behavior, she's just staying bitter over it and trying to use it to win people's affections. She's a pure narcissist, in my opinion. Just a pure narcissist. That is believable. So two months after Abby goes on her rant about nobody visiting her in prison, one of her favorite dancers from the show speaks out

In a profile for Cosmopolitan. This is Maddie Ziegler. She is 19 at this point, but she started dancing for Abby when she was just eight. And she was Abby's clear favorite throughout the series. And I think people have probably heard of Maddox Ziegler. She went on to have Yeah, from Sia's music videos. Yeah. And she booked that while she was on Dance Mobs. And so I think Abby also feels entitled to like being a part of Maddie's success. Right. Yeah.

She was in the chandelier video for Sia, and she was in West Side Story, The Fallout, Fitting In, Movies. So yeah, the fact that Maddie was a favorite makes what she says even worse because in this Cosmo profile, she doesn't hold back her opinions on Abby and the Dance Mom's franchise. She tells Cosmo

I had more stress at that age than I did once I left. I've disassociated so much from that time. I'll see fans post scenes from dance moms and I'm like, I literally don't even remember that happening. That poor little girl used to have like Breakdowns backstage. She was under so much pressure that any deviation from perfection, she would have a breakdown. Part of me when I hear that quote is like.

Abby's justification for why she's so harsh on these girls is that she's preparing them for the harshness of the outside world. And here you have Maddie being like Literally, the outside world was heaven compared to like the hell that you put me through. Yeah. But then on the other hand, if I'm Abby Lee Miller, I could be like,

Well, yeah, you're welcome. I put you through hell so that the rest of the world can just feel like heaven now. Yeah, it just feeds the delusion. Like there's no way to talk an abuser like that out of thinking that their abuse helps you. Yeah. So Maddie goes on to claim that she and her family spent three seasons trying to leave Dance Moms, but like the Highlands, they couldn't because of their contract.

And when she finally did manage to quit the show, Abby apparently locked herself in a room and broke into tears. And Maddie said that she had mixed emotions about that ending. She said, 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.

Wow. I mean, they have the truest definition of a trauma bond, which is a term for when someone who is abused. develops a relationship with their abuser and has very complicated feelings because it makes sense it is complicated. Yeah, the lines get so blurry between like professional and personal and it's Abby ends up responding directly to Maddie's profile. No. By posting a ten minute YouTube video on her own channel.

That screams someone doing well. Yeah. Here's a little bit of that YouTube video. I was on their side. I was battling the producer. I was fighting for better music. I was fighting for everything for these kids to be the best that they could be on television. And as far as The pressure to win? I was putting my name out there on television. I was risking my studio and the reputation and all the kids that came before Those kids you know.

First of all, the video is titled Dear Cosmopolitan with the emoji that has the bandaged heart. Yeah. Also, she has like over seven hundred and fifty thousand subscribers on YouTube. Who is encouraging her? Unsubscribe right now. I mean gays. Abbey Lee Miller is a gay icon. Because she is a mess. That video gets a little too close to her face for my taste. It is a little jarring. We both jumped. Yeah, if you're not properly prepared.

It is wild to see her use the language that we now consider to be the language of abusers. Yeah, I mean the complicated thing obviously about all of this is that there was a genuine dance studio here and she was doing genuine training of these children for like dance competitions, but also there's this reality show on top of it.

Like hard to parse out what is genuine and what was for the show. I'm sure she genuinely believes that she was their biggest advocate. Yeah. I wonder if it's it's because if her actions had just continued to exist in a vacuum, like if a camera crew never came and she just acted this way with the girls, there wouldn't have been a chorus of millions of people across the country being like,

That's messed up. I mean, as kind of restrained as Abby sounds in that clip of her, I mean restrained for Abby, that is, her fire is not gone. She has Plenty left to say about her old dancers. Oh no. Dot dot dot. All right. So Abbey Lee Miller obviously feels some kind of way about

these things that her former students are saying about her, particularly Maddie Ziegler and the comment she made to Cosmopolitan. But Abby didn't just clash with Maddie, she also had a beef with Maddie's sister, Mackenzie.

And their mom. A little backstory. So back in twenty fourteen, Abby helped produce a pop song for Mackenzie, or Kenzie she goes by. Called It's a Girl Party. Oh my god, it's coming back to me. For context, we can watch some of it. Please. This has the same energy as that Mary Caden Ashley song that's like pizza party

It like still is shocking to me how young these girls are. It's like every time I see a clip from the show, I'm like, oh my God, these are like literal young children. It is alarming. So yeah, Abby helped produce this video and song. Years later on her YouTube channel, Abby mocked Kenzie's singing ability. And Kenzie responds on Instagram and says Love when people can't keep my name out of their mouth just to stay relevant.

Just again wild because how old could she be? Like she's still probably a teenager. I mean she had to grow up so fast. So mentally, she's 45. True. And yeah, it sets up like this whole new round of beefing. Eventually, Abby sits down for an interview with friend of the pod, Sophia Franklin. On her show Sophia with an F, which is Sophia's post Call her Daddy podcast. This is also, if you remember, this is that episode where Abby says that she's attracted to high school football players.

Oh no. Everyone was like that. And Sophia kind of like tries to move the conversation along and Abby like doubles down. Lunacy. Sophia has to like abruptly end the interview. Anyway, during this podcast episode, Abby and Sophia discuss this kind of simmering feud with the Zieglers, and this is what is said. I'm the elder. She should speak to me. If you're in a room, you go to a wedding.

Here, there, whatever. The child should go to the adult and say, Hello, Miss Abby, how are you? It's great to see you. Whatever. So I really don't see that. Not that I wouldn't speak to them. I can't really separate Maddie from. from her sister and her mother. Mhm. And there's some I don't wanna use the term bad blood, but there are some devastating things there.

It is wild that she basically expects them to come to her because she is the elder. Yeah, it's bizarre. It's one thing if you're at like a family gathering, do you go up to like your grandfather? your aunts and uncles and say hello, sure. But like you're estranged from her and you were her dance teacher. Like, I genuinely think she believes she's a part of their family. Yeah. I think she believes that those girls owe her their lives. And like, in a way, did she help them rise to fame? Yes.

But she also hurt them a lot. Abby just does not seem Able to accept that separation. And also, it works both ways. Like, she also owes her career to like these girls. She does also go on to say that she didn't make any money from the Kenzie song, even though she produced it and appeared in the music video. Basically she's like, I did everything for that child.

And Kenzie's pop persona, Mac Z, was all Abby's creation and nobody's ever thanked her for it. All due respect to producer Abby Lee Miller, but like Who the hell knows who Max Z is? She is claiming credit for like massive success of this one girl and it's like, what success? I'm so sorry to her, but what are we talking about?

So yeah, even though Dance Moms has been off the air for years, in May 2024, Lifetime hosted a reunion show and most of the dancers showed up, except Except for Maddie and Mackenzie Siegler. Wow. And Nia Sue. Nia didn't go? Good for her. No, they were all like, we don't want to go back to the dance mom's world. But apparently, yeah, the other girls who did show up, they kind of felt some type of way about the three who didn't show up.

And one in particular had something to say about it. That would be Jojo Siwa. No. We don't have enough time to discuss the absolute phenomenon of Jojo Siwa. I don't even know what to call. I feel like I need to refer to her in scientific terms because she is she needs to be in textbooks. But JoJo shockingly doesn't Share the feelings that the rest of the girls feel about Abby or the show. JoJo still regularly talks about Abby and insists.

That Abby is a good person. Here's a clip of Jojo during the reunion where she's defending Abby. This is gonna be a little little controversial to say, I think, but to me. Abby was always right. If I was a mess and a beat-off, she wasn't just yelling at me because she wanted to yell at me. I actually was a mess and was a beat-off. One thing that I've learned, like really working insane in Hollywood, is that

That's normal. And it's like it's it's scary that that's normal, but that taught me how to survive in the industry. I mean it truly is so tough. Obviously, it cuts to the other girls when she's talking. And Paige and Kendall, especially, are just shook. By what she's saying. They can't believe it's coming out of her mouth. And did Jojo lack some manners when she came on the show? Yeah. She would interrupt a lot.

She would be a beat behind. It's like even if you were wrong in those moments, JoJo, that doesn't mean that's how it had to be addressed. Right. You didn't have to be yelled at to correct that behavior. So yeah, JoJo feels totally inclined to like agree with Abby. The rest of the dancers They were all left traumatized by Abby's style and methods.

One former dancer Chloe pretty succinctly wrapped up just how lasting an effect Abby had on her self-esteem. Here's what she said. I thought it wasn't enough, like in every single way. And it wasn't until about a year ago that I realized the way I felt about myself were her words still lingering with me like ten years later. Ugh. Do you think they've gone to enough therapy to also untangle the fact that their mothers witnessed that and kept them in that environment? Their parents.

And all of America witnessed what was happening to them and then encouraged and incentivized it. So I can't even begin to unwrap that in my own head. Yeah. Not great. But yeah, I mean Abby has continued down the reality TV path. She recently debuted a new show called Madhouse. House where adult dancers are all in a house and training under her. Clearly she's still kind of banking on the fact that there's an audience that is there for her brand of intensity still. But yeah, that is the feud.

I mean, the more I think about this view, the more angry I get at the moms, because it's like they ultimately were the enablers. Yeah, Abby was a monster, but a lot of them knew she was a monster ahead of time and they still put their children through that and then they kept their children there. It's icky. It is really dark. To watch as an adult. And I feel like a show like this could have only existed in the time period that it did. I mean, one complicating factor is Us the audience.

Because we can kind of debate whether the moms are the villains or Abby is the villain, but like We are kind of the ones who are enabling all of them by continuing to watch. Oh, we're complicit. I do think Abbey Lee Miller is a gay icon. But that is almost not even an honorific. No, you can be the worst person in the world and be

And oftentimes you are, yeah. I do think obviously anyone who was tuning in is complicit. Like there's a reason there are so many seasons. It's because people kept coming back for more. Yeah. We're all monsters. We all are. Apparently, Madhouse, Appilee Miller's new show where she yells at adults instead of children, will be on Brandon TV, which is an app that you can purchase for$5.99. It's like a

Streaming service that nobody knows about. Yeah. So yeah, you yell at children for eight years straight, go to federal prison for bankruptcy fraud, and have a terrible YouTube You too can get your very own series on an app that nobody has ever heard of. From Wondery, this is Dis An Tell.

Feudster. The show is hosted by me, Matt Belisai, and me, Sidney Battle. We use many sources in our research. A few that were particularly helpful were cosmopolitans and Maddie Ziegler's first grown up cover is Here and She Isn't Holding Anything Back by Alexandra Whitaker and Lifetime's Dance Mom series. Our senior story editor Alex Burns wrote this episode.

Kate Downey is our lead producer. Jasmin Ward is our producer, and Jake Dvorsky is our associate producer. Our story editor is Greg Castro. Sound design is done by Kelly Kromeric with additional audio assistance provided by Adrian Tapia. Fact-checking by Gabriel Drolet. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for FreesundSync.

Sophia Martins is our managing producer and Joe Florentino is our coordinating producer. Our executive producers are Janine Cornelo, Stephanie Jens, Marsha Louie, and Aaron O'Flarity for Wondering.