Everyone’s replaceable, swears Dance Moms alum Abby Lee Miller. But producers were nearly left scrambling when the Mad House star threatened to leave the show for this reason, she revealed to E! News.
Abby Lee Miller was ready to swing from the metaphorical chandelier in defense of former student Maddie Ziegler.
“I quit my job many times,” the Dance Moms alum revealed in an exclusive interview with E! News’ Francesca Amiker. “The first time I quit and said, ‘Get your stuff, get out of my building,’ was when they didn’t want Maddie to go do the Sia video.”
But the Abby Lee Dance Company founder was adamant that her then-11-year-old star get the chance to live like tomorrow doesn’t exist.
“They weren’t allowing that,” she alleged of producers’ reactions to Maddie booking Sia’s “Chandelier” video in 2014. “And I was like, ‘She’s going, that’s it.’”
And when the tween returned from the bewigged experience—the first of her many collaborations with the songwriter Maddie likened to her “guardian angel”—”They gave her a solo that day to put her on the spot, to make her fail,” Abby alleged. So she choreographed a plan. “We just used an old solo and put different music to it,” the 59-year-old shared. “They didn’t even know.”
Given all her efforts, it stings a bit that she’s fallen off of Maddie and younger sister Kenzie Ziegler‘s proverbial pyramids.
Referencing her battle with battle with cancer and emergency spinal surgery Abby reflected, “I’m laying in a hospital bed dying, and where was anybody? Who showed up?”
A few of her students proved she’s not replacable, Abby noted, name-checking Elliana Walmsley and Maesi Caesi, but she remains closest to Kalani Hilliker and JoJo Siwa.
“JoJo I talk to all the time,” Abby shared, revealing they’re in constant contact about any number of Dance Moms-related opportunities that come their way. “We’re kind of in alliance. We have a thing happening where if we both decide to do it, we’ll do it, otherwise we’re both not doing it.” (Among the yeses: JoJo sitting down to reminisce with Abby on her Leave it on the Dance Floor podcast last August.)
As for Abby, she’s still very much livin’ on the dance floor.
“Hell yeah,” she responded when asked if she’d run it all back. “I had five crazy mothers 10 years before, when there wasn’t reality TV. I could have done it then and I can do it now. I could start tomorrow.”
That is, if she wasn’t already in the middle of her second act, which sees her telling a new crop of more mature dancers to save their tears for their pillows.
With most of her team on Mad House—kicking off its second season on Brandon TV Feb. 27—clocking in a decade or so older than her former junior elite competition team, “It’s just different,” she said of the cast that includes newcomers like Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition alum Haley Huelsman, America’s Got Talent favorite Donovyn Diaz and JoJo’s recent ex, So You Think You Can Dance star Dakayla Wilson. “There’s no moms, so I don’t have to hold back. I’m talking to them, and they have to stand up. They have to fight back with me, and they usually don’t.”
Instead, said Abby, they’re focused on remaining “booked and busy.”
Aspiring stars entered the so-called mad house to “use it as a chance to get on television and a chance to be in a cool show,” explained Abby. “But then next thing you know, they’re going on tour, they’re doing the Country Music Awards, they’re doing this, they’re doing that. So, it was very competitive, but it was also wonderful to see these young people booking jobs, and that’s why they were there.”
Because as much as she touts how replaceable everyone is, “These kids on Mad House, they have a future,” she insisted, “whether it be on a cruise ship or Broadway or in a music video, they have a future and we’re trying to get them there.”
They’d hardly be the first of Abby’s charges to make a name for themselves. Check out how her Dance Moms students have been handling their solo acts.
Maddie Ziegler
In the decade-plus since the Pennsylvania native pirouetted her way into our hearts as the unquestionable star of the Abby Lee Dance Company, she’s jeted her way from electropop star Sia‘s music video darling to film actress with appearances in Sia’s directorial debut Music, the 2021 West Side Story remake and the 2024 flick My Old Ass.
She also released a New York Times best-selling memoir, 2017’s The Maddie Diaries, judged a new crop of talent on So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation and teamed with younger sister Kenzie Ziegler for their Take 20 With Maddie and Kenzie podcast. “I think we wanted to let our guards down and show something that wasn’t so heavily produced,” Maddie explained to E! News, “and, rather, just us having a pretty casual conversation.”
For her next act, she’s eyeing her own beauty empire. “I would love to do my own line one day,” she said. “I think that would be so amazing and something that I’ve dreamt of doing forever.”
Kenzie Ziegler
Fully graduated from her acro days, one of the singer‘s latest releases was 2023’s “Anatomy,” a very personal ballas detailing her relationship with her estranged father. “I definitely am stepping out of my comfort zone,” she told People of the single, “and being authentic in a different way that’s not just on social media—I’m telling my story.”
And with all due respect to the nearly 15 million Dance Moms fans who follow her on Instagram, she dug a little deeper for her third album, biting my tongue, which dropped in July 2024.
“I feel like this is just the first time where I can talk about things that have happened with my life and share some important things to me,” she told E! News. “I just want people to take away something from it—whether that be happy, whether that be sad or that they can relate to it.”
Chloe Lukasiak
Nearly a decade after she took her final Dance Moms bow, the trophy-collecting soloist was ready to start living on the dance floor again.
“I missed dance, and I wanted to find a way to get back to something I had loved so much,” the Girl on Pointe: Chloe’s Guide to Taking on the World author explained of launching Elevé National Dance Competition with mom Christi Lukasiak and fellow mother-daughter duo Diane and Brittany Pent. “But I wanted to help create something that was the exact opposite of what I had experienced. Something positive. I challenged myself to develop something to reignite my love of dance.”
Though the competition took a bow after one year, the Pepperdine University grad is still making moves. Focusing primarily on content creation, she’s also been writing her “first fiction fantasy book,” she told E! News in 2023 and putting some thought into her next chapter in a yet-unamed city. “What I’ve learned the past couple of years is that everything works out exactly as it’s supposed to do.”
Nia Sioux
The OG company member (and death drop enthusiast) continues to slay in music (she dropped her single “Low Key Love” in 2020) and acting, fronting the web series Sunnyside Up and appearing in 59 episodes of The Bold and the Beautiful.
And while wrapping up her day job as a UCLA student (she graduated with a degree in American Literature and Culture in June 2024), she was moonlighting in Hollywood, recently dropping her single “IMMA CATCH” and landing on Variety‘s 2023 Young Hollywood Impact Report.
Next up, “I’m just so excited to focus on my career and my craft,” she told E! News in May 2024. “Now I can go off and live my life and experiment and try new things and hopefully direct more and act more and sing more and just perform in general.”
Brooke Hyland
Trading in group numbers for group trips, the eldest of the show’s OGs led a 2023 excursion to Costa Rica, sharing on Instagram in July that “7 days took us from strangers to friends crying in the airport having to say goodbye to each other.”
Next up, was a six-day jaunt through Croatia inspired by the European backpacking trip she enjoyed after graduating from Ohio University. “I explored beautiful places and cultures, while making lifelong friends in the process,” she shared. “It was the trip of a lifetime.”
When stateside, the Pittsburgh resident—who got engaged to account manager Brian Thalman in May 2024—makes the most of her marketing degree, both with her Bite-Sized Foodie Instagram account and the Hyland Sisters brand she shares with little sib Paige.
Paige Hyland
The four-season vet has few tears to save for her pillow as of late. Since earning her degree from West Virginia University in May 2023 (“IM SO PROUD OF YOU!!!! Congratulations,” Christi Lukasiak commented on her graduation ‘gram), the model and influencer has criss-crossed the country with stops in the Hamptons, Colorado and Wyoming.
Paige’s No. 1 travel buddy (other than older sis Brooke): Her longtime boyfriend, former college football player Jayvon Thrift. “Adore you in every kind of way,” she wrote of the fitness model in a 2022 post.
The pair marked five years together in July 2024 by signing their first apartment lease, Paige writing on Instagram, “new adventure coming soon.”
Kendall Vertes
These days, the James Madison University senior is still collecting trophies as part of the Virginia college’s championship-winning dance team. “Younger me would be so proud,” the political science major wrote in a September Instagram. (Naturally, her dance mom Jill Vertes chimed in, “I know I’m so proud of my little kendall.”)
In addition to trying her hand at acting (including the 2019 movie Rapunzel: A Princess Frozen in Time and a live-action version of Anastasia) and singing (as Kendall K, she released several albums), the season two arrival has nabbed more than a few sponsorships, thanks to her 11 million Instagram followers.
JoJo Siwa
Despite appearing in just two seasons of the OG series (after a stint on Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition) JoJo with a Bow Bow arguably stole the spotlight, going on to nab a massive YouTube following, an exclusive licensing deal with Nickelodeon, endless branded merchandise and a spot on Time‘s 100 most influential people of 2020.
“One of the biggest things that I ever learned from Dance Moms was either to sink or swim,” she once explained to Kelly Ripa. “Not, like, physically, actually in a swimming pool. But to really just be able to survive and to want it.”
These days, as she pals around with the likes of Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian, she’s doing more than treading water. In 2021, the LGBTQ+ icon partnered with Jenna Johnson to compete as the first same-sex couple on the U.S. version of Dancing With the Stars.
Now she’s eyeing an even bigger stage, telling Raven-Symoné and wife Miranda Pearman-Maday, “My dream, dream, dream, dream is the Super Bowl, to do the halftime performance.” And once the singer—who dropped her debut EP Guilty Pleasure in July 2024—scores that gig, she told the duo on an August 2023 episode of The Best Podcast Ever, “Then I’ll retire and have babies.”
Kalani Hilliker
Back home in Arizona, the dancer, actress and entrepreneur is fully embracing what she calls “my health and wellness era” with the 2023 launch of her beauty line Kare.
“I struggle with anxiety,” she explained to E! News of her inspiration. “And I really wanted to create a brand that was inclusive to everyone to be able to just relax and take time for yourself and have a solid self-care routine to help you get through your day.”
And, yes, the season 4 arrival, who also got her start on Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition, is still nailing every last arabesque, having dipped her perfectly arched foot back into dancing and teaching. “I obviously have a very different teaching way than Abby does towards me. Or, honestly, most of my dance teachers,” shared the dancer, who announced her engagement to Nathan Goldman in August 2024. “I like to be very kind, but also you’ve got to push them to be the best they can be.”
Asia Monet Ray
Consider Asia officially raised. Though the California native stepped away from TV cameras just before her 10th birthday—following one season each on Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition, Dance Moms and her own standalone series Raising Asia—”I genuinely had a great experience on it,” Asia insisted to E! News in 2021, acknowledging that wasn’t necessarily the case for many of her costars. “There was nothing that I would change on my experience whatsoever.”
Wrapping up her high school career in June 2023 as a valedictorian, “I’m extremely proud of myself for achieving a personal goal,” the model and artist wrote on Instagram, “and I can’t wait to see what’s next.”
Thanks to a plethora of brand deals, invites to every it event and a recently released dance-ready single “Oh Boys” and eponymous album, her future seems bright.
As for her reality star past, “I really did enjoy the time I had out there and growing up on television,” she told E!. “Even though it seems like a lot, it was something that really set me up for life that I would never take for granted.”
Camryn Bridges
Since joining the team in season 7, the St. Louis native has been living on some much larger dance floors.
Between touring with Kendrick Lamar and performing in Usher’s Las Vegas residency and Super Bowl halftime show, she took to the Grammys stage with Missy Elliott. “Beyond blessed!!!” she wrote of the February 2023 experience.
And after gigs dancing in the 30th anniversary celebration of The Lion King at the Hollywood Bowl and alongside Chloe Bailey at the BET Awards, she plans to keep climbing her own personal pyramid. As she put it in a December 2022 Instagram marking the end of her 76-show stint with Lamar, “I know this is only the beginning.”
Brynn Rumfallo
When she exited stage left after a three-season stint that saw her trying to fill Maddie’s ballet shoes, the Phoenix native “wanted to go back to high school and I wanted to just be normal and have my friends,” she explained in a 2023 YouTube video with best friend Kelsey Millar. “High school sucked, but I’m glad that I did it. And now that I’ve experienced both lives, I know what I want. Which, there is a way to balance both of them in the middle.”
For the 2021 grad, that’s meant launching her and Millar’s Out of Line podcast and documenting her trips to Coachella and Stagecoach for her three million Instagram followers. Plus, experiencing more than a few run-ins with fans when she takes her dance students to competitions.
“It’s really cute,” Brynn, who remains close to Kenzie, said of one encounter. “They’re like, ‘Miss Brynn, you’re famous?’”
Source: www.eonline.com