The singer and dancer shared her thoughts on 'Dance Moms' in a new podcast episode.
JoJo Siwa says she thinks Dance Moms to a certain degree was "detrimental" to her career.
In the latest episode of her podcast, JoJo Siwa Now, the 20-year-old "Karma" singer opened up about the recently aired Dance Moms: The Reunion special on Lifetime and made the revelation that while she is forever grateful for the original show, there are parts she struggles with to this day.
"Today we are kind of going back to, not necessarily how it started for me and how I became a public human being, but something that I think really was detrimental to my career and was massive for me, which was Dance Moms," she says at the top of the episode.
She continues, "We had the Dance Moms reunion just happen and the Dance Moms reunion, you know, it was a mixed bag of bones for me, for sure."
While Siwa does not extrapolate further on why exactly she considers the show -- which put her on the map and launched her into the public eye -- to have been "detrimental" to her career, she does go on in the episode to explain her reason for leaving in the middle of season 6.
The singer -- who was recently spoofed by Saturday Night Live cast member Chloe Fineman -- shares that as they were filming the hit reality TV series, she was presented with another opportunity, which she doesn't name but purportedly is her contract with Nickelodeon. She tells her listeners it came down to wanting that job more than finishing out the season with Abby Lee Miller and the other girls.
Siwa adds in the episode that as she and her mom were going back and forth on the decision, they even got advice from an unnamed Dancing with the Stars cast member who told them to put Dance Moms in the rearview mirror and leave before she would grow to resent the show.
"I think leaving Dance Moms while I still loved it was the best decision," Siwa said.
In a previous episode of the podcast, she shared that she struggled with filming the Dance Moms: The Reunion special as the producers wanted to stir up drama by having her call up Miller, 58.
"Dance Moms as a whole is not a mixed bag of bones for me, it is the biggest blessing of my entire life, it is one of the things that I am most grateful for," she says.
"There was a few times on the reunion where the producers tried to do some shady s**t," Siwa claimed in the May 1 podcast episode. "The producers wanted me and Chloé [Lukasiak] to kind of get into it a little bit and talk about our online beef, and honestly that's not how I feel anymore."
In a previously released clip from the reunion, Siwa and her fellow former dancers -- including Kalani Hilliker, Kendall Vertes, Chloé Lukasiak, Paige Hyland, and Brooke Hyland -- were prompted to call out the Dance Moms stars who refused to be a part of the reunion -- Nia Sioux, Maddie Ziegler and Mackenzie Ziegler.
Sioux later shared her reasoning for skipping the filmed special in a TikTok video where she shared that she just was not interested in returning to the world of Dance Moms.
"The reason is quite simple. I just didn't want to do it," the 22-year-old dancer shared last week. "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."
In her latest podcast episode, Siwa says she couldn't disagree more strongly with Sioux's purview on their Dance Moms days, calling herself a fan of the show to this day and saying it was one of the best experiences she has ever had.
"Of course, there were hard days but nothing that I couldn't handle and nothing that I didn't want to handle and want to have," Siwa said in the latest episode of her audio series. "There was a lot of tears, a lot of blood, a lot of sweat, but look at where it got me."
She continued, "It is a massive part of my career that I will always and forever be so freaking grateful for."
RELATED CONTENT:
