'I think the kids can't face me,' the 'Dance Moms' alum shared on the 'Just B with Bethenny Frankel' podcast.
Abby Lee Miller is never afraid to share what's on her mind.
On Wednesday, the dance teacher talked about not being invited to Lifetime's Dance Moms: The Reunion special on the Just B with Bethenny Frankel podcast.
Miller, 58, suspects it's because her former Abby Lee Dance Company students place her at the bottom of the pyramid.
"I think the kids can't face me," she explained, adding, "because they know they would never be where they are today if it wasn't for the show."
Dance Moms alums, including JoJo Siwa, Chloe Lukasiak, Kalani Hilliker and Kendall Vertes, recently came together to discuss their oftentimes painful experiences on the show, which aired on Lifetime from 2011 to 2019.
Miller damaged her relationship with several former students and their mothers over her abrasive and demanding behavior toward them. On the podcast, she specifically reflected on her past connection with sisters Brooke Hyland and Paige Hyland, which broke after she had a verbal altercation that turned physical with their mother, Kelly Hyland.
"There's two little girls who I was very close to, much closer emotionally and family-wise than any of the other kids," she explained. "Their mother was in my original competition team when I was 14 years old. She stayed at my studio, then she left, got married, had kids, brought them to my studio at 2 years old."
But Miller isn't convinced that her young students had such a negative experience.
"If this was so toxic for all these kids, why did they come back?" she questioned. "The kids came back. There were other studios in town, mine was the best."
Miller also insisted that the drama wasn't all bad.
"There were good times, and it was fun," she added. "And they loved what they were doing."
The choreographer is sure that Dance Moms was detrimental to her career.
"What the show did, and the moms did ruin my business," she noted. "They destroyed my business."
But Miller wasn't the only one absent from the reunion. Nia Sioux, and sisters Maddie Ziegler and Mackenzie Ziegler chose to skip the reunion.
"The reason is quite simple. I just didn't want to do it," Sioux shared on TikTok. "Some people think it was because I had sorority stuff, nope, I didn't. Some people think it's because I'm in school. I am in school, but it wouldn't have been an issue. I just didn't want to do it, and that's a good enough answer and that's a good enough reason."
Even Lukasiak originally intended to not participate in the reunion.
"I said, 'No,' because it just didn't feel right. I spent so many years trying to leave that in the past, and then I went to college and I kind of disappeared for a minute," she told ET. "It was my last semester when we were filming. I decided — not in an arrogant way — but they're gonna talk about the people who aren't there, so they're gonna talk about me no matter what, so I might as well be there to be able to speak my piece, say my opinions, and talk about what happened in the past."
During the reunion, the cast slammed the co-stars who skipped out on the special.
"Here's the thing, they're not here so why are they still trying to make headlines with it? Don't talk about Dance Moms if you don't want to be a part of it," Vertes said of the three missing dancers. "It's literally the stepping stone into who we are today. We would not be here without Dance Moms."
"Them not being here is kind of like, 'Let me erase my past, pretend it never happened and shove it down the drain' when it's like, that's why you are who you are," Siwa said.
However, when the cast spoke to ET after filming the special, they were more understanding of their former fellow dancers' decisions.
"I don't think it had anything to do with us," Hyland told ET. "I think they love us and we have our own relationship and that's why we had a birthday party and we had our own fun. But I think it's a lot of revisiting those feelings and it's not something that everyone's ready for."
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