Maddie Ziegler Slams ‘Dance Moms,’ Says Being On It Was ‘Dramatic And Stressful’

Maddie Ziegler may have gotten her start on Dance Moms, but the young dancer has moved on and isn’t looking back.

This summer, Maddie will star in two films, The Book of Henry and Leap!, and the former is already gaining a lot of critical praise. In The Book of Henry, Maddie Ziegler stars as the girl next door who is being abused by her policeman father. During the film, Naomi Watts and her sons concoct a plan to save her from the hell she’s living in. At a pivotal juncture in the film, Maddie also gets to do a beautiful solo representing her character’s feelings.

As for Dance Moms, the young star has totally moved on.

“The show was a really stressful time. I just didn’t want to deal with all of the drama anymore,” she told Seventeen Magazine, the cover of which she is gracing this month.

The star also revealed in her New York Times bestseller The Maddie Diaries that the stress of the show was so much that she often bit her nails to the quick because she was so afraid of Abby Lee Miller yelling at her if she didn’t win first place.

She did, reveal, however, that she does miss dancing with her friends on the team.

It appears, however, that she does still keep in touch with several of the girls, particularly Kendall Vertes, who was her best friend on the show.

The star hasn’t made any comments about her former dance teacher’s upcoming incarceration and has instead strategically kept silent. Although Abby Lee Miller used to be incredibly close to Maddie Ziegler, her sister Mackenzie Ziegler, and her mother Melissa Gisoni, it appears the ties have since been severed after the girls left Dance Moms.

Abby Lee Miller threw shade at Maddie Ziegler’s mother on an Instagram photo, however, saying that the “truth will come out” as a caption underneath a photo of herself with Melissa and Abby’s late mother. It is unclear what Abby is referring to or if she is attempting to implicate Melissa in her criminal activity; she stated previously in a roundabout way on The Wendy Williams Show that several of the mothers had helped her smuggle money from Australia to the United States.

However, it seems Maddie Ziegler is glad to have Dance Moms out of her life, and she and Mackenzie seem to be doing just fine without it.

[Featured Image by Kevin Winter/Getty Images]