{"id":122453,"date":"2025-11-05T03:20:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T03:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/122453\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T03:20:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T03:20:09","slug":"dance-moms-nia-sioux-says-lifetime-cut-abby-lee-miller-racism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/122453\/","title":{"rendered":"Dance Moms: Nia Sioux says Lifetime cut Abby Lee Miller racism"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you were a Dance Moms viewer, you\u2019ll remember Nia Sioux, one of the only Black dancers featured on the show. Sioux\u2019s memoir Bottom Of The Pyramid came out this week, and details several moments of racism from infamous dance teacher Abby Lee Miller that never aired on the show. She writes<\/a> that Miller made racially insensitive comments about her body and hair, and once told her mother she said wanted \u201ca line of skinny girls who were the same height, with blond hair and blue eyes,\u201d and \u201cdidn\u2019t ask for \u2018a Tootie’\u201d (in reference to the character on The Facts Of Life).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking with The Independent<\/a>, Sioux says, \u201cThere were always moments like that. It wasn\u2019t like, just a one-time thing. There were a ton of moments where there were microaggressions, where there was just blatant racism. It would happen frequently. It wasn\u2019t just the few times that I mentioned in the book.\u201d As for what the network, Lifetime, left on the cutting room floor, Sioux speculates, \u201cI think they had to censor a lot of stuff because they still need to make her likable for TV. If you think about it, she did make really good TV. She lives her life like a movie. So it\u2019s definitely easy to kind of make good TV out of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller may have made for good TV, though likable isn\u2019t a word many would associate with her abrasive, bullying behavior. Lifetime didn\u2019t do much to obscure that, and many moments of microaggressions did make it in the show (enough that there are full YouTube compilations<\/a> like \u201cabby being RUDE & RACIST to nia for more than 10 minutes\u201d). But Lifetime never intervened on any of this until 2020, when Dance Moms season eight star Adriana Smith detailed racist interactions<\/a> that she and her daughter Kamryn had with Miller. She alleged that Miller once said to her off-camera, \u201cI know you grew up in the HOOD with only a box of 8 crayons, but I grew in the Country Club with a box of 64\u2014don\u2019t be stupid.\u201d Following Smith\u2019s accusations, Lifetime canceled Abby\u2019s Virtual Dance Off special. The public controversy prompted Miller to apologize \u201cTo Kamryn, Adriana, and anyone else I\u2019ve hurt,\u201d though Smith said Miller did not reach out personally.<\/p>\n

Sioux didn\u2019t receive an apology from Miller, and has distanced herself from the franchise. She declined to return for the reunion in 2024, saying<\/a> that she was grateful to the show because it\u2019s \u201cthe reason why I have such an amazing life now,\u201d but she \u201cjust didn\u2019t want to do it.\u201d On the press tour for Bottom Of The Pyramid, she\u2019s said<\/a> she wanted the opportunity to tell her truth and change the narrative that was built around her on the show. Looking back, she says to The Independent that Lifetime protected Miller from racism fallout \u201cmore than they protected me in those situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dance Moms’ Abby Lee Miller apologizes for past racist comments, loses Lifetime special<\/a>Dance Moms\u2019 Abby Lee Miller is heading to prison<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you were a Dance Moms viewer, you\u2019ll remember Nia Sioux, one of the only Black dancers featured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":["post-122453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}