“I’m over bringing up things that happened over 10 years ago,” says Maddie Ziegler, referring to a childhood in Pittsburgh captured on the popular reality-television show Dance Moms, about a group of young competitive dancers, their overbearing mothers, and a notoriously nasty coach: Abby Lee Miller. From its premiere, in 2011, when Ziegler was only eight, it was clear that she had enormous talent, causing Miller to favor her and the rest of the cast to view her as an ambitious, tightly wound, and even sometimes spoiled rival.
Now 21, Ziegler is re-inventing herself, creating distance from the childhood image that has long defined her. She has turned her sights from dancing to acting, thoughtfully selecting the roles that speak to her, starring in an Acne Studios campaign (“They have such a youthfulness to them,” she says about the brand; “I feel like I’m gonna wear them until I’m 70 years old”), and interacting with her 13.5 million Instagram followers, who know her as an approachable and friendly figure. And, yesterday, her latest project, My Old Ass, a feature film directed by Megan Park and starring Aubrey Plaza, premiered.
