World-renowned TV personality, dance teacher, and choreographer Abby Lee Miller gave the University of North Texas a deep dive into the startup of popular show Dance Moms and how she rose to fame on Feb. 23, 2026. Nothing was left untouched in this interview, with spills on how Dance Moms negatively portrayed her on TV and how the moms weren’t all as innocent as they say they were either. Was she innocent in all of this, or is there truth to both sides? Let’s dive into what she said.
Abby started the interview by telling UNT students how it all began. She said that it all started with her now close friend, John Corella, who is a world-renowned choreographer, dancer, and actor that was known for working with very well-known celebrities like Celine Dion, Janet Jackson, and Paula Abdul. He also did opening dance numbers for the Grammys, the Oscars, and the Emmys. Abby quoted her mom, Maryen Lorrain Miller, saying, “He looks like Valentino on stage. He was handsome and charismatic and very masculine, like a Gene Kelly type of dancer.”
Abby has known John since he was a teenager doing dance competitions and grew to know his family. Years later, knowing that John did all this amazing work and built up his professional resume, Abby said she was shocked to see him at a dance competition in Vegas that Abby and her dancers were attending. John said, “I’m at the end of my career. I’m ready for it, you know?” and of course knowing Abby she made a cunning remark to the crowd of UNT students and said, “Some of you don’t even have a career by the time you’re 34, right?”
The next day of the second part of the competition, Abby saw John in the hotel lobby. He asked Abby, “Where are you going?” and Abby told John that she was going to see some of her students do their solos down the street. John was confused because he thought that her students were all here and that they were amazing dancers. Then Abby claims to have said in a smart remark, “Mmm, those are my good kids. Come with me.” So, John and Abby got in a taxi to go watch her other students do their solos.
There they were, some of the well-known girls from Dance Moms that were about to do their solos and had no idea they were about to become stars. Abby and John stepped into the ballroom, and there was Maddie doing a cute tap number in the six and under category. Then, there was Paige doing her solo which Abby said she “always forgets.” Nia was doing her little solo, as well as some of her other kids that did not end up on the show. As John was watching all of Abby’s kids do their solos, John said, “Oh my God, Abby, these kids are adorable. They should be on television.” Abby responded, “Let me introduce you to their mothers.”
Abby says she took John down to the pool deck to introduce him to some of her students’ mothers and as they walked in, Abby describes them to UNT students as “drunk, broke, and complaining about everything.” Abby and John went back to the competition and enjoyed themselves watching Abby’s “good kids” without any mothers, which Abby was thrilled about. After the competition, Abby went back to Pittsburgh and had no idea how she was going to pay her bills. John went back to Los Angeles and started to create a format for a television show and then Abby got a phone call at the ALDC. It was John calling Abby to ask her all these questions like: Do the moms pick the costumes? Do the moms pick the music?, Do the moms tell you who gets a solo? Abby was distraught and confused and said, “No, I do all that stuff, do you know nothing? You did dance competitions all your life John.” John replied, “I was a guy, I just wore black pants and a shirt that matched the girls’ costumes and showed up.”
John let Abby know that he has a friend that was a casting director for the shows The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. Unfortunately, Abby told UNT students, she doesn’t like kids, so she didn’t take John’s offer for Dance Moms, but she introduced him to Brian Stinson who Abby refers to as “Satan.” John and Stinson formed an alliance to try to get this show on air, but the doors keep getting slammed, until they walked into a place called Collins Avenue Entertainment. They gave them an opportunity to shoot a sizzle of the show and Jeff Collins (the president of the Avenue Entertainment) gave them $3,000 to shoot it.
A “sizzle” is a three to five minute video of what the show will entail to get people excited to watch. So the sizzle was moms drinking, kids dancing, moms fighting, and kids crying. After the sizzle was released Abby said that 11 networks were interested and it ended up being cut down to Lifetime and Bravo. Abby said, “Bravo is killing it with the Housewives franchise, yes, and Lifetime was getting killed. All they have is 57 ways to kill your husband’s movie trends.” In the end Lifetime ended up buying the show.
Abby had questions of her own — on why Lifetime would want her small studio in Pittsburgh when there are a million better studios in Arizona and when Lifetime had its headquarters in LA where there’s a dance studio at every turn. Abby said that Lifetime’s explanation was that it is because it is cheap to film, there are a bunch of tax rebates, and it would be cheap to house the crew. So, Abby said, basically Lifetime are cheapskates.
When the Lifetime crew came down to look for a cast, you might think that a lot of kids and parents came down to audition. That just wasn’t the case. Abby put the casting out all over her website, but only 30 families came to audition and 27 were her own students. Two were friends of Abby’s that had two little boys and the 30th one was Cathy. Lifetime started the auditions around 10 p.m. on a Friday. They grabbed trophies, a crown, and they had fresh flowers around the corner of the studio. The kids walked in with their mothers and all they did was sit down and smile, that was it. No dancing, just sitting there playing the part.
Abby said that the director really wanted Melissa to be in the show because all the other moms during their interviews talked negatively about her, so they wanted her for the drama and she ended up changing her mind. Lifetime cast six girls and their mothers: Maddie, Mackenzie, Brooke, Paige, Nia, and Chloe. Parents from Abby’s studio were not fond of this decision because they believed that their kids were better and Abby agreed, but the truth is it wasn’t Abby’s decision. Abby said she also needed the money because she was going bankrupt. Abby said, “We are going to try it, but you’re rewarding the kids whose parents sit upstairs, and degrade you, who talk behind your back, and your choreography, this and that.”
The kids that were cast now had the advantage of going places with Abby and spending more time with her than the other kids at her studio even though “their mothers sneak past the desk without paying again,” Abby claimed. Even though other kids and their mothers were good dancers and good mothers, they just didn’t make good TV, which Abby claims ultimately pushed them to the side while giving rude parents a platform on television.
So, was Abby guilty in all this, or are there two-sides to every story? There are definitely two-sides to this story, because even though throughout the whole show Lifetime portrayed Abby as this vindictive, ruthless teacher, Abby explained to students at UNT that there were reasons for her madness and that most of her reactions were provoked beforehand. In hindsight, there were also things that she acknowledges she did wrong, like pit the girls against each other and put them down, making them feel small.
Her visit to UNT also gave some insight into how some of the moms would deliberately make Abby look like the evil one, but in reality, Abby says the moms did some pretty damaging stuff as well, which ended up affecting their girls and making them turn against Abby as they got older. Of course, she said, each party has the right and should be able to speak out about how they feel and also how they see the situation. The whole show was just a mess and hurtful to everyone that was in it and Abby said she wishes that she would have gone about it a different way.