Abby Lee Miller believes she wasn’t invited to participate in Lifetime’s special “Dance Moms: The Reunion” because her former students “can’t face” her.
“They know they would never be where they are today if it wasn’t for the show,” the controversial choreographer said of the reality series “Dance Moms” while stopping by the “Just B with Bethenny Frankel” podcast this week.
Show alums JoJo Siwa, Chloe Lukasiak, Brooke Hyland, Paige Hyland, Kendall Vertes, Kalani Hilliker and their mothers participated in the special, which aired earlier this month, to reflect on their time on the show, which ran from 2011 to 2019.
Miller reflected, too — specifically on her tight-knit relationship with sisters Brooke and Paige, which came to an end after the dance studio director had a falling out with their mother, Kelly Hyland, whom she’d known for decades.
“There’s two little girls who I was very close to — much closer emotionally and family-wise than any of the other kids,” Miller told Frankel.
“Their mother was in my original competition team when I was 14 years old. She stayed at my studio. Then she left, got married, had kids [and] brought them to my studio at 2 years old.”
The “Everything I Learned About Life, I Learned In Dance Class” author wondered, “If this was so toxic for all these kids, why did they come back? The kids came back.”
She noted that while “there were other studios in town,” hers — Abby Lee Dance Company (ALDC) — “was the best.”
Miller, 58, went on to claim there were “good times” and that “it was fun,” adding that the girls — aged 6 to 13 at the time — “loved what they were doing.”
The reality star also blames both the series and her former students’ mothers for her downfall, claiming, “What the show did and the moms did ruined my business. They destroyed my business.”
Miller recently admitted on an episode of “IMPACT x Nightline” that she regretted how “harsh” she was on the children — but only when she knew their “talent” just wasn’t there.
Over the years, several “Dance Moms” alums have spoken out about their negative experiences with the stickler.
Lukasiak recently told Page Six she was made to feel like she “wasn’t enough,” while Maddie Ziegler previously branded ALDC a “toxic environment.”
