Though Dance Moms is classified as an unscripted reality television show, viewers have been skeptical of the claim for quite some time.
The show Dance Moms is filled with drama, and participants frequently clash with their peers.
Dance Moms alums, including Maddie Ziegler, have revealed whether the show is scripted in recent years.
Is Dance Moms a scripted show?
While none of the alums have explicitly stated that Dance Moms is scripted, many have attested to the fact that what is seen on the screens is not the reality.
Ziegler previously revealed to USA Today that much of the conflict between the moms in the show was fabricated.
“It’s difficult to do a reality show when there’s so much crying and drama,” she says. “The producers set it up so that we all yelled at each other,” she explained.
“Remember how I said that moms fight? Sometimes the moms pretend to fight. They just start talking and laughing about it after that.”
The Real Story of Dance Moms
Payton Ackerman, like Dolph Ziggler, has spoken out about it. She revealed how she ended up on the show in a video posted to her YouTube channel.
Ackerman explained that she was at a studio for her dance class when people from the show asked her and her mother to return so they could film the Lifetime reality show.
But, because Ackerman and her mother had driven for an hour to get to her class, her mother refused and became irritated.
“She went downstairs and opened the studio door…” and started going off,” she recalled. “She was like, ‘You’re not going to waste my money, you’re not going to waste my time, you’re not going to waste her time.”
Throughout the incident, there was a cameraman behind Ackerman’s mother who “loved the drama.”
The next day, Ackerman and her mother were invited to film an episode of Dance Moms.
Several other alums have also stated that, while not everything said on the show was true, people did mean everything they said at times.
In the aforementioned video, Ackerman also discussed how her portrayal on the show had harmed her real-life image.
When she competed in the first episode, the producers asked her if she thought she did better than the other contestants (the other groups).
Ackerman concurred. However, when the episode aired on television, it was edited to make it appear that she made the statement about the other girls she was dancing with.
“Everyone who watched the show after that hated me,” she explained. “The show’s girls turned on me. For the purpose of the show. The mothers turned on my mother. It was literally a whirlwind of chaos.”
The abuse she received lasted until she stopped filming for the show. People were calling her home phone late at night, and many showed up at her family’s front door.
In fact, her situation had deteriorated to the point where she had received death threats.
However, this isn’t the only topic on which the show’s alumni have spoken out.
Many people have also commented on how badly Abby Lee Miller, the show’s dance instructor, yelled at them, revealing that her behavior was even worse off camera.
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