Dance Moms’ Abby Lee Miller has been dropped by Lifetime after a decade at the network following accusations of racism, Deadline reports. She will not return to her flagship series if its ninth season is renewed, and Abby’s Virtual Dance-Off, her digital dance competition program that was scheduled to premiere in June, has been canceled.
Last week, Adriana Smith, whose daughter Kamryn appeared on Season 8 of Dance Moms, responded to Miller’s Black Lives Matter Blackout Tuesday Instagram post with her own IG message. “I couldn’t think of a more perfect day to address my experience with Abby Lee Miller. A statement from her that sticks in my mind to this day during my time on DMS8 is ‘I know you grew up in the HOOD with only a box of 8 crayons, but I grew up in the Country Club with a box of 64 – don’t be stupid. This to me shows that you think you are better than me and in higher rank and all together superior to ME!” Smith wrote, adding that Miller told her daughter the only reason she was there was to add “a sprinkle of color.”
Camille Bridges, another black mother on Dance Moms, told E! that her daughter Camryn Bridges was also treated unfairly by Miller. “[Abby] tried to spin Camryn as being the poor one and there on scholarship. I shut that down immediately. She loves appropriating our culture and never appreciating it,” she said. “She did not give black choreographers on the show acknowledgment of their work. She continuously put Camryn in afros.”
On Friday, Miller posted a generic apology on Instagram, claiming to feel “truly sorry” and hoping to “earn… forgiveness” from everyone she’s hurt without actually naming them all. Smith re-shared the post with a long caption claiming that she did not believe the apology to be genuine. “I firmly believe that if Abby was truly sorry, she would have apologized a year ago when she exposed my then 7-year-old daughter to her FIRST account of racism,” she wrote. “So, no, I don’t accept her apology.”