Dance Moms alum Abby Lee Miller isn’t exactly saving her tears for her pillow when it comes to her now-fractured relationship with former star pupil Maddie Ziegler. But it’s safe to say the 23-year-old no longer claims the top spot on Miller’s pyramid.
Four years after the Pretty Lethal actress referred to her six-season stint on the Lifetime series as “a toxic environment,” revealing she hadn’t spoken to her ex-teacher since she and little sis Kenzie Ziegler exited stage left in 2016, Miller offered up her critique.
“When you wanted to win and you wanted to come in extra and you wanted more private lessons and you were the driving force, not your mother,” Miller told E!’s Hot Goss hosts Eyal Booker and Lonnie Marts IIV in a recent interview, “why didn’t you say it then?”
Because, as Miller stressed, Ziegler had no interest in being first loser: “She wanted to win, she was a perfectionist.”
The ex-studio owner, now helming a new star search with former nemesis Cathy Nesbitt-Stein, Abby vs. Cathy: Hit the 8!, also had some judgements for Ziegler’s fellow junior elite competition team member Nia Sioux.
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Dance Moms: The Reunion Premiere
“They’re too big for their britches,” Miller claimed to E!. “They don’t have time for their dance teacher.”
Though Sioux would argue she tried to make the time, revealing in her November memoir Bottom of the Pyramid that she’d contacted Miller after learning about her 2018 cancer diagnosis.
“It was on my heart to reach out,” the UCLA grad shared with E! News. “I would never wish any harm or like sickness on anyone.”
But after learning that Miller didn’t want to see her, “It’s like, OK, that’s my closure,” Sioux noted. “I was like, OK. Yeah, you haven’t changed.”
In that moment, she essentially did a death drop out of Miller’s life.
“As far as I’m concerned, she no longer exists in my world, and I like it that way,” the 25-year-old wrote. And while she wishes her no harm, “I’ve even ended relationships with people who keep in contact with her; it’s a boundary I’ve had to set so I can heal.”
Robin L Marshall//Jesse Grant/WWD
That means she’s remained in lock step with fellow OG Chloé Lukasiak.
“As a kid, I was pretty naive,” the Pittsburgh native acknowledged to E! News in 2024 of constantly being pitted against Zeigler. “I was always just trying to prove myself to my dance teacher. I was always like, ‘Why don’t you like me? I don’t get it. I’m doing my best. Why do you not want me to win so badly?'”
It wasn’t until she became an adult, continued Lukasiak, 25, that “I was like, Oh, that was out of my control. I could have done the absolute best job in the world and it still wouldn’t have been enough.”
But not every former Abby Lee Dance Company member feels their instructor was replaceable.
“She brought me in, and I would not be where I’m at or have the career that I have without Abby,” Kalani Hilliker explained to E! News in 2024. “And I think that I have to give a lot of credit to her.”
That doesn’t mean she’s turning to Miller, celebrating her 61st birthday Sept. 21, for tips on how to teach her own students, now that she’s opened her Arizona-based Khaos Dance Studio.
“I have a good relationship with her,” said Hilliker. “Not that I forgive her for things that she’s done to my friends or myself, but I’m just able to move past it.”
JoJo Siwa similarly understands that Miller may have been a bad girl, she did some bad things, but the singer is not necessarily concerned with the karma of it all.
“Abby’s been very, very supportive of my career,” Siwa explained to E! News of remaining tight with Miller. “Of course, we’ve had good moments on Dance Moms and off Dance Moms, and then bad moments on and off. But she’s a massive part in why my career is what it is today.”
And she continues to help Siwa choreograph her next moves.
“JoJo I talk to all the time,” Miller shared with E! in 2025 revealing they’re in constant contact about any number of Dance Moms-related opportunities. “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.”
Of course, they’re not the only franchise stars making big moves. See where Miller’s former students are now that they’re no longer livin’ on the dance floor.
