Abby Lee Miller regrets how “harsh” she was on young dancers — depending on their talent level.
The disgraced dance teacher rose to fame in the early 2010s due to her intense training tactics on the reality TV series “Dance Moms,” which she now admits may have been a bit extreme in an upcoming interview with ABC News’ Juju Chang.
“Do you think you would take back some of the harshness — or any of it — when you look back?” Chang asks in a trailer for the newest episode of “IMPACT x Nightline,” out Thursday.
“Absolutely,” Miller, 58, replies. “Yes, I would.”
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“No matter how harsh I was on the kid, they weren’t gonna get it,” the reality TV personality explains. “They just didn’t have the talent.”
“You’re saying you regret it, not because you hurt the kids’ feelings, but because it was pointless,” Chang, 58, clarifies.
However, Miller — who took a second to ponder her response — insists she “didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings” and was just trying to help them reach their full potential.
“I want to get them to be better and the best that they can be,” she explains.
Several former stars of the Lifetime series have spoken out about their experiences working with the Abby Lee Miller Dance Company in recent years, often sharing unfavorable stories about their former teacher.
During an interview with Cosmopolitan in 2022, Maddie Ziegler opened up about her decision to leave the “toxic environment” in 2016 despite being one of Miller’s favorite dancers.
“I was like, ‘This is not for me. I can’t do this,'” she recalled, noting that Miller was “distraught” about her departure.
“I haven’t spoken to her since,” she added. “I feel at peace.”
Meanwhile, Chloe Lukasiak recently told Page Six that she now looks back at her time on the show with gratitude — despite growing up feeling like she “wasn’t enough” due to Miller’s vitriolic criticism.
“I am so grateful that I experienced the show exactly as I did because it’s made me into who I am,” the reality star, now 22, said on Page Six’s “Virtual Reali-Tea” podcast ahead of Lifetime’s “Dance Moms: The Reunion” special.
Lukasiak always felt like she was second-best to Ziegler, who typically topped Miller’s infamous “pyramid” ranking following each dance competition.
In fact, she believes Miller purposefully “manufactured” her childhood rivalry with Ziegler to get better ratings — despite the negative impact it had on the then-tweens.
Although Lukasiak thinks Miller pitting the two girls against each other was “unnecessary,” it taught her to be more in tune with her emotions.
“One thing I’m really grateful for having experienced what I experienced on the show is I feel really empathetic toward other people,” she said.
“I’m always really aware of their emotions and how they’re feeling and just checking in on people [and] being very observant of the world around me so that’s one thing I feel I really took away from the show.”
