JoJo Siwa may have been nominated for a Kids’ Choice Award on Saturday, but the “Dance Moms” alum says Nickelodeon didn’t invite her to the big show.
“A lot of you have been asking me why I’m not at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards tonight, and the answer is very simple — I wasn’t invited,” Siwa said Saturday in a video posted on her Instagram. “I’m not sure why, but I just didn’t get an invite.”
In a caption, she wrote, “I don’t want anyone to think it was my choice not to go…. I simply didn’t get an invite.”
However, a source close to the show’s production tells me that Siwa’s missing ticket “was an honest mistake.”
The source explained that the error occurred “because of a much reduced audience size due to COVID protocols.”
Siwa was nominated for favorite social music star. She picked up the award in 2019, but Dixie D’Amelio took it home this week.
Shortly after Siwa’s Instagram, chatter on Twitter questioned if Nickelodeon suddenly had an issue with her becoming a vocal LGBTQ advocate after she came out in 2021. “This had nothing to do with her as a person,” the source said. “That is so off the mark and very upsetting. It was truly an unfortunate mistake and she definitely should have been there.”
Reps for Nickelodeon and Siwa declined to comment for this story, but executives are going to be reaching out to Siwa “to try to make things right,” the production source said.
In January, Siwa celebrated her one-year anniversary of coming out as a member of the LGBTQ community. “In the last 365 days I’ve felt more love than ever. A year ago today I posted this picture and shared with the world that I was gay,” she wrote in an Instagram post.
The 2022 KCAs, held at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, were hosted by Miranda Cosgrove and Rob Gronkowski and featured performances by Jack Harlow and Kid Cudi.
