Sia Says Harvey Weinstein Invited Maddie Ziegler To Fly With Him
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Sia has revealed how she was forced to protect teen dancer Maddie Ziegler from disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
Maddie rose to fame when she appeared on Dance Moms from 2011 to 2016, first appearing when she was just eight years old. However, the performer is arguably best known for appearing on many of Sia’s music videos, live performances and even attending concert tours together.
In a recent interview, Sia revealed she prefers to keep Maddie close so she can protect her from the dangers that come with being in the spotlight, such as bizarre encounters with Weinstein.
While appearing on the Zach Sang Show, the singer said she had kept Maddie off a plane Weinstein ‘tried to get her on’, before adding, ‘I know there’s time where my insight has really made a difference, like, kept her safe.’
She continued:
Yeah, that was really disgusting. When he invited her, that’s when I called [Maddie’s mother] Melissa, I had to. I just said, ‘Please don’t, do not do that.’
Sia and Maddie first began working together when Maddie was jut 11 years old, with Sia admitting she felt ‘this extreme compulsion to protect her’. Even today, that has not changed, with the singer saying, ‘I just love her as a mother.’
However, Sia did confess there’s a certain irony that while she used big wigs to hide her own face, the youngster was growing more and more famous with every video she appeared in, even after several years of television fame.
She explained:
She would say to me, ‘Don’t be silly, I was already famous and I wanted to be famous.’ And I would say say, ‘And you know, it can stop at any time, right? If you want it to stop, I can make it stop. You can just go back to being a normal person again.’ But she just said, ‘No, I love performing. I love dancing, and I love acting so much.’
In fact, Sia and Maddie are so close that Sia has admitted feeling like a ‘pain in the butt’ in the eyes of Maddie’s manager, after convincing her co-star not to take up certain projects.
She said:
I felt that the film wasn’t good enough for her, and so I called Melissa, and was like, ‘Please don’t do this, like this isn’t good for her career. It’s not good for her long term credibility. This is not a good co-star to be in a movie with.’
Sadly, Sia wouldn’t reveal which particular celebrity, or even which movie, she was referring to.
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