Maddie Ziegler Says Mother Apologized For Putting Her Through Dance Moms

While appearing on Monday's episode of Emily Ratajkowski's High Low with EmRata podcast, the dancer opened up about her time appearing on the Lifetime series, and shared that her mom recently apologized for putting her through what ultimately became an unpleasant experience.

Ziegler, now 20, was only seven when Dance Moms premiered in 2011. Ziegler, her mom, and her younger sister, Mackenzie, appeared on the show for six seasons, exiting the series in 2016.

"Last year, I was having a really bad panic attack, and I called my mom, and things were coming up from the past, and she apologized to me," she told Ratajkowski. "She was like, 'I'm so sorry that I put you through that.' It's so sad because she would never want to hurt us, but none of us knew how crazy it would get."

The actress claimed that producers pushed her to create a bratty persona when the show began.

"When I was doing the show, in the first season ... I was seven, there [were] male producers saying, 'This is what you have to say,'" Ziegler said. "My mom wasn't in the room, so I was like, 'OK, I just have to do whatever I'm being told.' They would say, 'Say you're the best, say you're better than everyone else, say blah blah blah.'"

Since she did what the producers told her to do, she said she was ultimately "perceived as a little brat in the first season," adding that she got upset when she saw the first cuts.

"I remember we watched the first episode at a viewing party for the launch of the show, and I just cried because I was like, 'Oh my gosh. Everyone thinks I'm this bitch, and I'm not. I'm seven!'" Ziegler recalled. "It was so weird. It helped me a lot to be able to be like, 'I can say no. I can stand up for myself.' But being so young, you don't realize all those things."

She added that some viewers may have believed her to be the "most well-treated dancer" out of all the girls, but said the opposite was true.

"Looking back -- and a lot of people have started to say this -- it's like, 'Wow, she actually had the most pressure on her,' because she was like, 'You're my girl, so you have to lead everyone to victory every time,' which is just not sustainable," Ziegler told Ratajkowski, appearing to refer to Abby Lee Miller.

The West Side Story star said her mom struggled to break their contract, before claiming that Sia stepped in.

"[My mom] really did everything to try to break our contract and pull us out, and eventually did with the help of Sia," she said of the singer, whom she called her "guardian angel," noting that she "saved" her from the show.

"It was hard...," Ziegler added of Dance Moms. "We would do almost 30 episodes a season, so it consumed our lives."

Elsewhere in the conversation, Ziegler recalled how she started dancing competitively at four years old, sharing that, as a result, she doesn't remember much of her childhood.

"It's so weird," she told Ratajkowski. "It's weird to find out things that I did when I was younger on TikTok. I'll see people posting things of me, and I'm like, 'I don't even remember doing that.'"