Photo credit: Richard Knapp
Did you see the news today? This isn’t really dance news, but it’s someone related to the dance industry. Abby Lee Miller has pled guilty to one count of concealing bankruptcy assets and one count of failing to report an international monetary transaction, according to Deadline.com.
Miller is lucky that this was a plea deal because she was originally facing five years and a $5 million fine on the initial charges of 20 counts of fraud. This deal will only cost her 30 months in jail, if the prosecutor gets his way. She will be sentenced on Oct. 11.
I think the hardest part to accept is the fact that the controversial Dance Moms star used her employees to to smuggle the money into the U.S. from Australia. It was placed in their luggage in Ziploc bags.
We can all sit here and bash her for days, but let’s not do that. She’s paying for her crimes on and off the show. What I want you to take a look at is the interview I had with her in late March at the High Strung movie premiere.
I was struck by her nervousness while I interviewed. I wonder if she was worried I would ask about her court case — not my style for red carpet reporting — but I felt like we were watching the armor come off.
The usually confident and brazen Abby Lee Miller looked exposed. She kept backing away from the microphone and didn’t make a lot of eye contact. It’s like she knew that this cycle of her career was coming to an end… it’s so telling when you look back at this interview now.
I appreciate that she brought forth talent like Maddie Ziegler, Nia Sioux and Chloe Lukasiak. Without her show, we wouldn’t see an explosion of popularity in the youth dance category, which only makes dance on TV more prevalent for us to enjoy.
Look, there’s plenty of negative things to take away from Dance Moms, but I am going to focus on the bright lights from that show… and also not kick someone when they are down.
Let me know your thoughts about my Abby Lee Miller interview!