“Dance Moms” star Nia Sioux has accused “ignorant” former dance teacher Abby Lee Miller of making racist comments while filming the hit show “Lifetime.”
The dancer, who appeared on the series from 2011 to 2017, made the shocking claims in her new book, Bottom of the Pyramid.
Sue, 24, claimed that Miller, 60, criticized her braids while filming season two.
“Abby told me her hair was bad and needed to be fixed. She said, also on camera, ‘It’s like a log coming out of the side of my head,'” she writes in the book, published Tuesday.
The influencer wrote about another incident, this time not seen on Lifetime’s cameras, in which Miller allegedly asked her, “Don’t you wish you had white hair like girls?”
“I was taken aback by her question, but I said ‘no,'” Sue wrote. “‘Well, really?’ she said. ‘Don’t you think it’s easier?’ I said again and I told her no. It didn’t matter what she said. I knew I didn’t want to be white. Unlike the other exchanges, this one was not broadcast. ”
The controversial comments didn’t end there, with the former reality star claiming that the owner of the Abby Lee Miller Dance Company also criticized her body.
Sue wrote that Miller “believed that black people were physically more susceptible to flat feet” and could often be heard criticizing her “bad feet” on camera.
“She said, ‘Well, you know your people have flat feet,'” Sue wrote about the alleged incident. “This made me feel like I was ignorant. I know a lot of black dancers with perfectly arched feet.”
“But despite the fact that she actually believed this ridiculous generalization to be true, she threatened to punish me for what she perceived to be my shortcomings. ‘If you don’t turn that foot,’ she warned, ‘I’m going to come out there and tear it down.'”
The model went on to claim that she had been criticized for her “thighs,” “butt” and “muscular legs.”
“At one point in Season 6, Abby talked about the size of my thighs backstage,” Sue writes in the book. “She implied that I was fat because I wasn’t trying hard enough. This was just one of many comments Abby made to create the illusion that I was lazy or just not strong enough as a dancer.”
In her memoir, Sue also claimed that many of her solos had racial overtones, which would be featured as storylines on the Lifetime show.
As an example, Miller titled Sue’s first solo song on the competitive team “Nutty of the Jungle”, which was about a child left in the wild and raised by monkeys.
On Tuesday, Sue spoke on Page Six Radio about how “hurtful” it is to write about certain topics, such as the allegations of racism she has faced.
“We talk about that very openly in the book, and I thought it was really powerful,” Sue exclusively told hosts Danny Murphy and Evan Real.
“What I talk about a lot in this book is similar to how I was seen. I was seen as an underdog, a bad dancer. Some of the things that were said about me… They tried to create a narrative as if black girls couldn’t dance, and that was the narrative they were dealing with.”
Sue went on to claim, “We had a season seven to change the story, but in the end we couldn’t do that. We couldn’t do that. And that’s part of why I had to write this book, because that’s not the whole truth…We started in the same place, but by season seven, by the end, I was a completely different dancer, a completely different person. I wasn’t weak. I was a very strong dancer.”
The influencer added that she “loved” being part of Miller’s competitive team at first, but that changed “a little bit” as the season progressed.
“The things people said, the negativity, the toxic environment definitely got to me, especially towards the end. I was definitely burnt out.”
Sue continued that she does not currently have “any relationship” with Miller.
Representatives for Mirror and Lifetime did not immediately respond to Page Six’s requests for comment.
Sue is not the first student in the series to speak out against Miller and her harsh teaching strategies.
Lifetime hosted “Dance Moms: The Reunion” in 2024 with Sue’s co-stars Chloe Lukasiak, JoJo Siwa, Brooke and Paige Hyland, Kendall Vertes, and Kalani Hilliker. Sue and show standouts Maddie and Kenzie Ziegler did not appear in the special.
“I always felt like I wasn’t good enough, in every sense of the word,” Lukasiak said of Miller’s reunion with Ziegler’s sister in the series.
Miller claimed on the 2024 podcast “Just B with Bethenny Frankel” that she wasn’t invited to the reunion because her former students couldn’t “face” her.
