Dance Moms cast members expose the ‘fake’ reality series

It’s been four years since Lifetime’s controversial reality series Dance Moms went off the air.

And with the show set for a reboot next year with a whole new cast, former cast members have now come forward to expose what really went on behind-the-scenes of the hit series.

From fake fights to staged competitions, some of Dance Moms’ biggest stars have held nothing back when it comes to revealing all the production secrets and editing tricks used to create maximum drama for ratings.

One of the show’s most memorable feuds was between Abby Lee Miller and her rival Cathy Nesbitt-Stein, who ran the Candy Apples dance studio.

However, the pair have now revealed that their rivalry was initially staged for the cameras and that they didn’t actually have a real falling out until producers pushed them into a catfight during season three.

Appearing on Abby’s Leave It On The Dancefloor podcast, Cathy admitted that she was ‘playing a character’ on Dance Moms and thought of herself as an actress.

‘I looked at it as an acting job,’ the 64-year-old said.

‘I had done so much theatre and stuff like that, that to me, when the lights went down it was like, “Okay, hey it’s me, I’m Cathy and let’s keep being friends.”

‘But I thought to myself, “I’ve got a paid job here. I’m doing an acting job, so I’m gonna do it just as well as I can do it”,’ she added.

Abby, who was friends with Cathy for many years before the show even started, praised Cathy’s acting chops.

‘I don’t know who you ever took acting classes from, if you did, but she would never break character,’ Abby exclaimed.

Cathy then opened up about one of the staged scenes she filmed, in which she showed up to a dance competition in a limousine to mock Abby, who had travelled by bus.

‘When we filmed, we’d be dark on Monday. Tuesday they’d come in and lay out their agenda,’ she said, referring to production.

‘That’s why it drives me crazy when people say, “Was this all fake? Was it scripted?” No, we did not have scripts that we had to memorise, but there was a definite agenda,’ she explained.

‘Those people would go off in the night time and they would come up with these derived storylines, and to me that’s an agenda. And to me, it may as well have been scripted.’

Explaining the limousine scene, Cathy said producers informed her that day that for her scene she’d arrive to the competition in a limo.

However, Cathy claims she never actually took the limo to the competition, and instead she and her co-stars arrived to set separately and then got into the vehicle and drove around the block a few times until it was time to exit the car on camera and confront Abby as part of the concocted scene.

The Candy Apples teacher said she thought the scene ‘would be fun’ when it was presented to her, but then ‘it had to be turned into drama’ by producers.

She also admitted that an infamous fight between herself and Abby in season three, which saw her swat Abby with her purse, was something she did ‘for ratings’.

‘We weren’t really on the outs,’ she confessed. 

However, the pair did end up having a real falling out over the incident, as Abby didn’t realise at the time that Cathy was just performing for the cameras. 

Maddie Ziegler, who is arguably the biggest star to come from Dance Moms, has also spoken out against the show.

She was the first star from the series to expose production, telling USA Today in 2015, ‘The producers set it up to make us all yell at each other. 

‘You know how I said that moms do fight? The moms have a fake fight sometimes. Afterward they just start talking and laugh about it.’

On the High Low with EmRata podcast this week, Maddie said that she was fed lines by producers.  

‘When I was doing the show, in the first season I was 7, [and] there were male producers saying, “This is what you have to say.” My mom wasn’t in the room, so I was like, OK, I just have to do whatever I’m being told,’ she explained.

‘They would say, “Say you’re the best, say you’re better than everyone else, say blah blah blah.” And so I was perceived as a little brat in the first season.’

Dance Moms villain Ashlee Allen, who joined the show in season five, also exposed production during a recent interview on her daughter Brynn Rumfallo’s podcast.

‘Without the moms causing drama there was no show,’ she explained.

‘So I was hired to come in and shake things up. That was my job. I’d walk in and the producers would ambush me, like three of them, [and say], “We need this and we need to have a good week this week.” 

‘The hard thing is that you don’t really understand how things are gonna play back on TV.’

‘You’ll go and sit in an interview and they would literally feed you lines and you would have to just repeat it, [with] no idea of where they’re gonna insert it in the episode,’ she claimed.

Ashlee said one of her famous fights on the show, where she clashed with Jill Vertes and her daughter Kendall, was staged and edited.

She claimed Jill and Kendall had been told to start a fight with her, and when she did nothing to antagonise the pair, producers inserted an unrelated soundbite over the scene to make it look as if she’d insulted Jill.

‘Jill was playing a part,’ she later admitted. ‘I actually like Jill.’

Brynn added despite the on-screen conflict between herself and Kendall and Jill, in real-life she actually liked them both and would even stay at their house.

Ashlee said producers would text the moms during scenes with ‘prompts’ to direct the conflict.

‘To actually walk into a room with those people and then be told you have to say mean things about their kids or to them… I’m actually surprised at how ballsy I actually was,’ she laughed.

‘I think what made me more angry was the moms that got to sit there and do nothing and be the loved moms,’ she continued.

‘Yeah, that would be a nice job, but that wasn’t my job.’

Despite having to play a villain and getting hate on social media, Ashlee said she’s still friends with the producers to this day.

‘They’re just doing a job too. Everyone is just trying to make a good TV show. I actually like the producers, I’m still friends with a lot of them.’

She added: ‘You can’t hate them. Dance Moms is huge. And after the fact I was grateful that we got to be part of it.’

Ashlee also used the fabricated nature of the show to her advantage, and said that she would come up with storylines and drama around Brynn’s solo dances to ensure that they’d be featured on the show.

She then admitted to starting a nasty fight with fellow dance mom Kira Girard after producers asked her to create a storyline for Kira, as Kira could never be bothered creating fake drama like some of the other cast members.

Ashlee ended up antagonizing Kira relentlessly in the scene, before eventually bringing up that she had ‘three baby daddies and a criminal record’.

‘Kira would never give you something to go off of so you had to reach,’ Ashlee said on Brynn’s podcast.

‘I knew Kira and I do feel bad about some of the stuff that I said to her,’ she added.

In 2018, Kira and her daughter Kalani Hilliker both claimed during a live event the dance competitions on the show weren’t even real and had to be set-up to avoid breaching child labour laws, and so that producers could ‘switch the scores’ if needed.

Dance Moms is set for a reboot next year from the show’s original executive producer, Bryan Stinson.

The reboot will feature an entirely new cast, from the teacher to the dancers to the moms. 

A casting notice says they’re after a ‘unique, charismatic and competitive’ teacher to fill Abby Lee Miller’s shoes. 

Abby is also working on an ‘all new’ dance-based reality show that has ‘nothing to do’ with the Lifetime network, where Dance Moms originally aired. 

‘It’s classic “Abby Lee Miller” but there are little ones and their moms, and the talent is nuts,’ she told Entertainment Tonight in March.

The series will feature older girls in their mid to late teens, who will clash with Abby in dramatic scenes. 

‘You don’t go home crying to mom… you’re 17, either you’re going to do this for a living…or quit,’ she said.