Maddie Ziegler on Growing Up, Protecting Herself and Being a Work In Progress

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Type Maddie Ziegler into any search bar and, depending on where you are, you’ll see something different. If you’re on Tiktok, you might see her as a child, furiously pirouetting in resurfaced clips from the 00s reality TV show *Dance Moms.* On YouTube, you could see her hurling her body around a giant cage, or performing at the Grammys, in her pre-teen stint as Sia’s muse. Then there’s her brief spell as a best-selling author (she’s written both fiction and non-fiction) or, more recently, her burgeoning Hollywood acting career including roles in a soon released *My Old Ass* (2024) alongside Aubrey Plaza and the recent *West Side Story* (2021) remake by Stephen Spielberg. You might already be one of her 13 million Instagram followers. It’s the kind of career anyone would be proud to look back on – except she’s 21, and she’s barely even started it. “I feel so old in so many ways,” Ziegler says, with an air of embarrassment. “I just have an old soul… but it’s a very weird thing, because in a lot of ways I feel like I’ve accomplished more than I even thought I could by 21. I’m like, now what?”

We’re speaking over Zoom: Ziegler is calling me from her bed in LA, her make-up-free face framed by a lush pink velvet headboard and some scattered Mongolian wool cushions. It’s a rare moment of luxury – a few days of sleep, sunbathing and dance classes – before the more chaotic latter half of 2024 kicks off. In a few days, she’ll be heading to New York to promote her new film My Old Ass, a Megan Park-directed comedy in which she stars alongside Aubrey Plaza and Maisy Stella. After that, she’s leaving the country for a top-secret three-month shoot – an “unexpected” new project she’s “stoked” for. “I’m really taking this time to try and be the best version of myself before I go.”

For long-time followers of Ziegler’s, this serenity could seem unusual. The star has been pushing herself to her limits for the majority of her life: she began dancing at just four years old, and was winning national titles by the age of seven. In 2011, when she was just eight, she became the breakout star of Dance Moms thanks to her phenomenal talent and dedication, which regularly saw her make the highly sought-after ‘top of the pyramid’. In old clips from the show, you can see the cost of this work ethic, with Ziegler’s carefree abandon on stage at odds with her tearful, jittery compulsions off it (she has since said that the stress of the show, and its “toxic work environment”, has led to most of her childhood being “blocked out”.) She openly admits that she has been battling with perfectionism ever since. “It’s a work in progress,” Ziegler says today. “It’s interesting because some things really affect me and some things really don’t… When I was little, I was such a rigid kid, I was so focused and dedicated, and I’m grateful for that, because it’s got me where I am now. And I think it’s okay to have parts of that girl in me. But also I am [still having to tell myself], ‘Just breathe, you’re gonna be fine and you’re gonna get through it’. Not everything’s meant to be perfect.” That said, there are still moments when the inner competitive dancer leaps back into the spotlight. “My personal trainer says that my ‘little toxic side’ comes out in the gym, because when things get really hard I start smiling and laughing,” Ziegler jokes. “She’s like, ‘I know something’s hard for you because you start smiling’. If I could take that version of myself and just put it into my workouts, that’s great. Then everything outside of that is me working on, like, peace and trying to love myself.”

Her transition into acting started, unofficially, around the same time she met Sia. The singer became enamoured with Ziegler after seeing her on Dance Moms, and reached out to her on Twitter to ask if she’d like to star in one of her music videos. Ziegler was 11 at the time, and Sia cast her as a muse for the next couple of years, having the dancer play her on-stage alter-ego (or ‘inner child’). While the singer hid her face, or performed with her back to the audience, Ziegler would take on the role of her id, throwing her whole soul into her meticulously choreographed dances. These volcanic expressions of emotion weren’t just limited to her body, though: in the video for Sia’s “Big Girls Cry”, the camera rests on her face while she flickers through a staggering range of human emotion, her face as elastic and free as her body. Ziegler realised that, rather than dancing in these performances, she was actually becoming an entirely different person. “I wasn’t just rehearsing the dance steps, I was really incorporating the whole character,” she remembers.

“It’s weird to watch someone your whole life and feel like you know them.”

These are ultimately the moments that got Ziegler to where she is now, and while she is polite and appreciative of them, there are clearly frustrations that come from finding fame at such a young age. “As I started to develop into more of a woman… I had the hardest time being able to prove myself as not a child,” she says. “I felt like people only saw me as that little girl.” She notes that random people will still come up to her and say hello, as if they’re an old friend, while younger fans – having seen old Dance Moms clips on TikTok – ask her to perform old dance moves from over a decade ago. “It’s weird to watch someone your whole life and feel like you know them.”

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What’s most notable about Ziegler’s career so far, though, is the feminine nature of her work. Most of her creative entanglements have been with women, with the star often playing muse to more established female artists. Aside from Abby Lee Miller (of Dance Moms) and Sia, there’s also been the directors she’s chosen to work with in her acting career – which is rare in itself, given how few opportunities there are for women filmmakers in Hollywood. “I have somehow fallen into working with predominantly female directors and DPs for the last few years,” she says. “I am not complaining, I am so happy about that.” Most markedly, in 2020, she worked with Canadian filmmaker Megan Park on her affecting directorial debut The Fallout, a study of the psychological impact of a school shooting. Both Ziegler and her co-star Jenna Ortega (now a close friend) received critical acclaim for their performances. “Megan is a genius filmmaker,” says Ziegler, her bright eyes widening with genuine awe. The pair have worked together again on My Old Ass, with the 21-year-old taking a supporting role as Ruthie – the best fried of lead Elliot, who begins to receive messages from her future self after an intense mushroom trip.

“I love acting, being able to transform into all these different people,” she says. “How I know I want to do a project is if I am reading a script and I’m like, ‘oh, I want to protect this character and I want to love her and hug her’... and actually, acting it out, I’m like, ‘Whoa, this is healing parts of me that I didn’t even realise’.” Her favourite role – or one of the ones she still actively carries – is from the 2023 film Fitting In. The coming-of-age movie, directed by Molly McGlynn, was Ziegler’s first major leading role: in it, she plays Lindy, a 16-year-old who is diagnosed with MKRH syndrome (a rare reproductive condition that blocks the growth of the uterus, vagina and cervix). “It has completely impacted my life in a way I can’t even describe,” she says of the film, noting that – although it was the most emotionally taxing – she would happily do it all again. “I honestly don’t know how people are method actors. I applaud people who are able to do that, but for me, it’s just too heavy, like you have to protect yourself and take care of yourself. And getting too invested... it’s a little too much for my heart. I don’t know if I could take it.”

“I was young and it was targeted at young kids, so it’d be interesting to see what my memoir looks like years down the line.”

While Ziegler has always thrown herself into her work, her main priority for the next few years is to learn how to relax. She tells me that she’s a “homebody” – “I don’t really party, I don’t really go out much” – though acknowledges that this might be more of a generational thing, or even an after-effect of COVID. Her closest friends are all of a similar age, and are some of the hardest working young women in LA – namely Jenna Ortega, Addison Rae and Olivia Rodrigo, as well as her sister Mackenzie. All of them remain “hyper-focused” on their career, but check in on each other’s well-being regularly, wherever they are in the world. “A lot of the people that I’m surrounded by are similar,” Ziegler says. “If you look at someone like Jenna, who’s one of my greatest friends, she hasn’t had a break other than Christmas since I worked with her. That was when we were 16, and we're 21 now. She’s the hardest working person, and has probably missed so many formative things that you're supposed to experience outside of work, and somehow has remained the most level-headed, sweet, humble person.” Ziegler finds a kind of salvation in these friendships, despite the incessant grind of work. “My core group of friends has always been so small, just because it’s pretty hard to trust people and their intentions,” she says. “I definitely learned the hard way when I was younger, just because I was so naive and so loving and had the biggest heart. That hasn't changed, but I’ve protected that more now.” Fame, she adds, can attract a lot of disingenuous people – a fact she was forced to confront at a very young age. “I was just very naive,” she says of her childhood. “Seeing little kid’s perception of me change…. I remember there were these few girls who used to make fun of me and my teeth. But then they saw me on TV, and they wanted to have a playdate. Seeing that in fourth grade? It's actually impressive that people are able to learn that skill at such a young age. Now I look back and I'm like, ‘oh, Maddie, how did you not see that?’ But I was a kid, so…”

Although Ziegler is keen to learn more about herself outside of work, her ambition is still simmering away – but where does the girl who’s done almost everything go next? “I definitely want to return to dance,” she says, pondering the possibilities. “I also would really love to have my own production company one day, and potentially direct in the future.” And although she’s already written one memoir – The Maddie Diaries, penned when she was 12, which she acknowledges is “hilarious” – she aims to one day do a more honest version. After all, there are many stories, “crazy things”, that she wasn’t able to be totally open about back then. “I was young and it was targeted at young kids, so it’d be interesting to see what my memoir looks like years down the line.”

“It’s just not healthy for a kid to be in that environment. So I wish I could just take some of that pain and stress off of my little self – as much as I could.”

Before we say goodbye, the conversation circles back to My Old Ass. In the film, lead character Elliott Labrant is visited by her older self (played by Aubrey Plaza), who proceeds to issue advice and warnings about the future that lies ahead of her. Given all the lives she’s cycled through, it seems a pertinent question for Ziegler: if she was given that gift, knowing everything she knows now, what would she want to say to her younger self? She pauses, mulling over the answer. “I would definitely just hug my younger self so tight, and tell her to breathe and not let things affect you as much as they do,” she says, carefully. “Because if you look back at all these different clips with me when I was younger as a dancer, I was always biting my nails, my shoulders were in my ears. I was, like, constantly on high alert, so stressed. It’s just not healthy for a kid to be in that environment. So I wish I could just take some of that pain and stress off of my little self – as much as I could.”

Maddie Ziegler on Growing Up, Protecting Herself and Being a Work In Progress

“It’s weird to watch someone your whole life and feel like you know them.”

“I was young and it was targeted at young kids, so it’d be interesting to see what my memoir looks like years down the line.”

“It’s just not healthy for a kid to be in that environment. So I wish I could just take some of that pain and stress off of my little self – as much as I could.”

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