Abby Lee Miller’s Ex-Student Mackenzie Slams ‘Dance Moms:’ ‘I Had No Childhood!’
Jan. 4 2019, Updated 10:21 a.m. ET
While Abby Lee Miller fights for her life amid her cancer battle, her former student is bashing the show that made them famous! RadarOnline can reveal exclusive details on Maddie Ziegler’s young sister Mackenzie slamming Dance Moms in her tell-all book.
In Mackenzie’s Kenzie’s Rules for Life: How to be Happy, Healthy and Dance to Your Own Beat, she admitted that she didn’t like dancing when she joined the show in 2011.
“I didn’t feel like I was good enough,” the 13-year-old wrote. “I was also really nervous about people watching me on TV. Would they laugh at me? Would I look really stupid up there? I know the cameras would be following us around and catching everything I did and said. I was embarrassed and really insecure.”
Although she failed to mention her former dance teacher Miller, 51, in the book by name, she seemingly slammed her for her harsh teaching style.
“I always felt like I had to live up to people’s expectations of me,” she penned. “I thought everyone was constantly judging me, watching each move and tearing it apart, nitpicking everything I did and laughing at me behind my back. The competitive dance world and reality TV can get a little crazy.”
But that wasn’t the only downside of the show, as she explained how dancing left her no time to be a kid.
“It was pretty much my answer to every party, play date, after-school activity, you name it: ‘Sorry, I have dance,’” she wrote. “I started to regret not being a ‘real kid’ with a real life. I felt like I had no childhood, and it made me sad and angry.”
She continued how the show led to social media bullying.
“People would be so cruel to me in comments,” she wrote. “They would compare me to my sister, saying that I wasn’t as pretty or as talented as Maddie. They called me fat; they said I was ugly and had big bunny teeth that stuck out. They made fun of my costumes and my routines, called me a crybaby and a loser. I felt like I was constantly being attacked. It made me paranoid and insecure.”
Mackenzie explained how it took almost her entire time on Dance Moms for her to be confident enough to quit.
“I was over it,” she said. “I felt like the constant competition life was getting to me too much. It wasn’t fun for me anymore; I was ready to move on and do something else. It was me knowing I was capable of doing so much more in my life and feeling ambitious and a little “itchy” to branch out. I was ready to move on.”
Miller favored Maddie and Mackenzie, often causing drama with other cast members by constantly awarding them with solos, until they left the show in 2016 to pursue other opportunities.
Miller pled guilty to not reporting an international monetary transaction and one count of concealing bankruptcy assets in June 2016.
She was sentenced to one year and one day in prison, followed by two years of supervised release in May 2017.
She was released from Victorville to a halfway house in Van Nuys, California on March 27. That’s when it was announced that she had been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
Are you surprised Mackenzie slammed the show? Tell us in the comments!
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