Maddie Ziegler isn’t used to fitting in. From a very young age, she was pegged as the standout: a beautiful, enigmatic star, expected to lead at the ripe old age of seven. For years, we watched her on Lifetime’s reality show Dance Moms as the tightly spun perfectionist who upheld her dance studio's competitive edge. Then we watched her as the Sia-discovered young talent who seemed to be everywhere: music videos, award show performances, movies.
Now, at age 21, Ziegler is having a metamorphosis. She's forging a new path where she’s still very much front and center, but in a different way. After her breakout role in The Fallout, a film directed by Megan Park where Ziegler starred alongside scream queen Jenna Ortega, Ziegler is getting her own leading role, in the film Fitting In.
The night before our formal interview, I meet Ziegler at the Regal Union Square cinema for the movie’s premiere. She arrives by car, alone. As we walk in together, she stops, taking in the movie posters featuring her face that line the walls. Her bright blue eyes light up; the surreality sets in.
We spend 30 minutes talking about Ziegler now being in a leading role while her audience giggles and records as many snippets of the young actor as they can. After the event I see Ziegler laughing as she chats with costar Djouliet Amara. Ziegler’s fans cling to the theater’s front doors, wading between the crisp New York winter air and the faintly air conditioned ticketing floor, whispering, wondering if they should be brave and ask for a photo. By chance, people at the theater stop and say, “Hey, that’s Maddie.”
There’s a level of parasocial relation that comes as a result of Ziegler’s past; a lot of people are on a first-name basis with her. “Acting gives me the creative freedom to jump into different things, but it also helps me protect my own being,” the 2024 Teen Vogue New Hollywood inductee tells me the next day over Zoom, referencing the distance she can create by playing a character instead of being herself onscreen. “It is scary to have people have such strong opinions on you and to feel like they know you. But there is something so beautiful about that too.”
Ziegler’s appearances on Dance Moms spanned six seasons, from 2011 to 2016. The series followed Ziegler and her childhood friends as they competed at weekly dance competitions, all the while enduring an unnerving amount of being berated and judged by adults. Ziegler was, notably, the favorite on the show, always at the top of the pyramid.
Fans of the show might suggest that Ziegler had it easier because she was the star student, but everyone wants to root for the underdog, not the consistent winner. When you are the standard and people are waiting to see you fail, how do you gracefully fall off the pedestal you’ve been glued to all your life? The access the world gained to Maddie during her adolescence — she was just eight years old in season one — still follows her. You can feel it when she talks about her past, with self-preservation consistently sitting at the forefront.
“I’m growing up, and it is liberating to know that I can speak up for myself,” Ziegler says. Talking back wasn’t customary in the dance world, nor was calling out double standards or teaching malpractices. The level of owning her own point of view that Ziegler now gets as an adult is apparent in her decisive stance against her years of hierarchy. “When I was younger and teachers would say, ‘You need to be more like Maddie,’ I felt myself trying to dumb myself down because I hated it. I don’t want anyone else to feel less than.”
You can also tell how those years of being separated from the group are etched into Ziegler's current existence. She tends to generalize after sharing a specific perspective. She doesn’t want to exclude anyone, so she’s careful with her words. She doesn’t want to imply that her view is better than anyone else’s. It’s a tightrope she still walks after years of being singled out for her dancing.
But even if Ziegler doesn’t want to say so herself, she is special, which is exciting and daunting at the same time. She was the best in her dance class, and she has used that success to propel her creative career forward — landing her here, now, in front of me on Zoom, as the star of a new film.
Ziegler's calm demeanor is comforting, but there’s a mystery about her that lingers even as she answers my questions. That mystery seems to be rooted in the tension between who we think she is, based on her televised childhood, and who she is growing up to be.
“I’m not always going to be that little girl,” she says. “I’m still that same goofy, loving, hard-working girl, but I’m also changing and growing. It’s scary when people are like, ‘But you’re not who you were when you were younger.’ And I have to explain, ‘Yeah, because that’s just not realistic.’”
In Fitting In, a fervent coming of age story, Ziegler’s character, Lindy, battles through her diagnosis of MRKH syndrome, a rare reproductive disorder, and the emotional turmoil that goes with being different in high school — those pivotal years when it feels earth-shattering to diverge from the norm. The film is a dramatization of director Molly McGlynn’s real-life experience with the diagnosis, and Ziegler doesn’t take that lightly.
“This film, this story, and Molly — I was so emotional the whole time,” Ziegler says. “I also felt so angry for [Molly]. I think it's hard enough to be a woman and to feel confident within yourself, and then to have men observing and staring at you like you're an object is such a scary thing. I'm so angry that that happened to her. She's so brave for telling this story.”
Fitting In was Ziegler’s first time leading a production and being number one on the call sheet. It required long, strenuous days, but she didn’t mind — in fact, she hopes it will become the norm in her career. Her competitive nature favors challenge, which made Fitting In feel all the more special. “If I were tired or stressed [on set], I’d say, ‘No worries, no worries,’ and our makeup artist would say, ‘Worries, worries,’” she recalls with a laugh. “When you’re in those moments, sometimes you have to make light of it. I think I sarcastically approach stress with, ‘Oh, I’m not worried at all,’ and it actually does help me through it.”
And those long days were worth it. Whether it was how held she felt filming the more intimate parts of this movie or how, after its release, she was able to google showtimes at her favorite theater in Los Angeles, Fitting In felt like the beginning of a new chapter in Ziegler's life. “Lindy will live with me through my life and through the other roles that I take on,” she says. “I am a very harsh critic toward myself, and it's hard to be proud, but the first time I watched [Fitting In], I was like, Wow! I did things that I didn't know I was capable of, and I'm proud, which is rare. I don't usually say that.”
As with the character of Lindy, dance will never leave Ziegler. She admits it’s still such a huge part of her world, something she never wants to stop pursuing. But she’s mindful of not falling into the dancer-typecasting trap; sure Ziegler can dance, but that doesn’t mean she needs to dance to tell an impactful story.
Now with a second feature film under her belt and a third on the way, Ziegler is focused on building longevity. She’s also focused on separating the girl we once knew from the woman she has become. Still, she’d be doing herself a disservice if she disregarded how having her youth on display played a role in bringing her here today.
“Obviously, I have my feelings about that [show], but if I didn't do it, I would not be where I am right now at all,” Ziegler says. “I wouldn't have been found by Sia. I wouldn't have found my love for acting through music videos, and I wouldn't be where I am, literally, right now talking to you.”
There are days when an air of malaise surrounds Ziegler, reminding her of the harm a child went through on national television. There are days when everything and nothing at all feels worth defending. It goes with the territory of being a child-star-turned-adult-actor. What is for show and what isn’t? Do emotions still feel sacred after you’ve had your fears, anxieties, and breakdowns hyper-edited into weekly 42-minute episodes?
Acting has been a way for Ziegler to take her power back. When thinking about her career aspirations, she is open to everything. “I look at Margot Robbie and at Reese Witherspoon's production company,” she says. “They're so incredible, and I'm very inspired by that, to have my own production company one day.”
Women-led sets are all that Ziegler has experienced so far in her young career, and she wants to continue to see that push in the broader industry as she expands to other areas of being on the big screen. Beyond that, Ziegler wants to play a female assassin in a film, à la Scarlett Johansson in the 2014 film Lucy. Ziegler knows her years of dance could be a great asset for a physical role like that, which would mean a chance to do her own stunts. “I don't know what my life would be like without working," she says, "but I love it so much and I don't want to stop.”
And she isn’t stopping. Ziegler’s upcoming project, My Old Ass, started filming shortly after Fitting In wrapped. The feature film, starring Aubrey Plaza as the older version of main character Elliot Labrant and directed by Megan Park, was bought by Amazon MGM for $15 million after its 2024 Sundance Film Festival premiere in January. Ziegler’s character is one of Elliott Labrant’s, the younger version played by Maisy Stella, best friends; Ziegler joined the cast only two weeks before they began filming.
“I didn't know if she wanted a break after doing [Fitting In], because it was obviously a much more labor-intensive role,” Park tells me via phone. “But she was so sweet and so game, and she was like, ‘F*ck yeah, I’ll come back to Canada and play this role!’ We got to beef up the part and she added so much more than what was even on the page.”
Park and Ziegler previously worked together on The Fallout, and Park jokes that she wants Ziegler to “be in everything she does.” She attributes this to Ziegler’s irrefutable work ethic. “She’s the utmost professional, over-prepared but flexible person with zero, zero, zero ego. All of the projects I’ve done with her, she’s come in as the most experienced person on the set and she’s just so humble and down to learn,” Park notes, also acknowledging that she sometimes worries about just how hardworking Ziegler is.
“She would never even ask for a chair to sit down, even if she were tired," Park continues. "She’s so easygoing and chill and never wants to make a fuss, we’d have to check in with her. Like, ‘Maddie, can you actually do that dance again right now or do you need to sit down?’ Having that kind of work ethic at that age, and the desire to continue growing and learning as an artist with such a lack of ego, is so rare in the industry. It’s a director’s dream.”
Ziegler knows that her intensity comes from years of competitive dance. “Being a dancer, you’re taught to be disciplined and listen to whatever your teacher is saying,” she says. “You don't talk back to them, and in a way, you feel like you don't have a voice — you can't have an opinion.” Although she doesn’t have to exist in that realm anymore, those traits are still deeply ingrained in her. Hard workers don’t just wake up one day and stop working hard; it’s not in their nature. But they do evolve to make space for new practices that feel honest for the perfectionist that still exists inside.
“I'm ready to leave behind the perfectionist,” Ziegler says. “I'm ready to leave behind the people-pleaser. I will carry those traits with me forever because that's who I am, but I'm really proud of myself for setting boundaries in the last year.”
Boundaries aren’t something Ziegler was necessarily familiar with during her Dance Moms days. And social media’s obsession with that reality series has kept it in the zeitgeist for more than 10 years now. TikTok’s use of popular sounds has meant an annual Dance Moms resurgence. If you scroll through Ziegler’s TikToks or those she makes with her friends Addison Rae and Cameron Field, you’ll find comments like, “I was trained to have my eyes on Maddie the whole time.” It’s all meant to be jokes, but Ziegler never wanted that level of hyper-visibility for her life.
She can’t comprehend that young people still watch the show in 2024, but that is out of her control. It can get exhausting feeling so deeply rooted in your past, but Ziegler will never take her loyal fanbase for granted. She’s grateful for the people who’ve been on this ride with her for more than a decade, just as much as she loves newer fans who’ve come for her film work.
Deeper into our conversation, there are glimpses of Ziegler feeling comfortable, such as when she laughs while sharing an encounter she had with girls about the same age as she was when her fame began. “I was on a getaway trip, standing by a campfire, and these little girls came up to me and said that they’re watching the show right now,” she recalls. “They were looking at me, confused, saying, ‘Wait, I thought you were our age.’ They didn’t comprehend that I was an adult now. They were asking me, ‘Can you do this trick for me? Can you do the Maddie face?’”
Ziegler understands the weight of her past. She’s been a role model for young girls even when she was just a young girl herself. And that responsibility is work to uphold, especially as she continues to become the woman she wants to be. “I'm always actively trying to be the best version of myself for everyone,” she says. “But sometimes you have hard days and you just can't. I have to remind myself, among the chaos, to make sure that I don't lose myself, especially with being so young. I have to just remain who I am at my core.”
All Ziegler knows is that she wants to continue telling stories and helping others feel seen through her filmography. It's the unknown that excites her, and that’s all that has existed in her career journey. Her current love wasn’t her first, and that can feel complicated, intimidating, and induce imposter syndrome. It’s why she leans so heavily into building out her craft. “I felt that I needed to prove myself so I could be taken seriously as an actor because I was taken so seriously as a dancer," she says. "People respected me on a high level.”
Whether you met Ziegler as the seven-year-old dancer whose first-place wins felt inevitable or the kooky yet powerful lead dancer in those Sia music videos from the 2010s, or even as Mia, the popular dancer finding herself amid the trauma of a school shooting in The Fallout, Ziegler has been around a time or two. Or maybe the character of Lindy in Fitting In has been your first introduction to Ziegler — which, she notes, is a refreshing surprise 15 years into fame.
At 21, Ziegler has experienced more than some will in a lifetime. It leaves her ample room for trial and error. When most are preparing to leave college and start their adult life, she’s getting to grow again — and with the freedom to fall fearlessly.
Ironically, Ziegler’s film career gives her a chance to have some normalcy. All the tiny, mundane moments regular teenagers face with boyfriends, best friend drama, or running on the track team, these are moments she looks forward to while on set. In a way it's her chance to relish in the joys of being young — something she didn’t experience often when she actually was very young. Acting has given those memories to Ziegler; acting has further opened her world.
“When I was doing Fitting In, Lindy got a locker,” she says, smiling. “I told the crew, ‘This is the best day of my life.’ It became a joke on set — everyone was laughing — but I have always dreamt of having a locker."
Read all of our New Hollywood 2024 stories below:
- Maddie Ziegler on Dance Moms, New Movie Fitting In & Embracing Hollywood
- Ariana Greenblatt on Barbie, Borderlands, Billie Eilish & Child Stardom
- Keith Powers on Uglies, SAG Strikes, Issa Rae & Finding His Own Lane
- Christopher Briney on Reneé Rapp, Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 & Hollywood Next Moves
- Aida Osman on Rap Sh!t Cancellation, Black Stories in Hollywood & Facing Acting Fears
- Iñaki Godoy on One Piece, Latinos in Hollywood & Living His Best Life
- Megan Suri on Valentine’s Day, Bollywood & Movie Career Post Never Have I Ever
- The SAG Strike Proved How Unions Help Make Young People’s Dreams Viable
Photo Credits
Photographer Josefina Santos
Lighting Director Brian McGuffog
Gaffer Daniel Patrick
Gaffer Kane Katubig
Digitech Isan Monfort
Retouching Digital Area
Stylist Ian McRae
Stylist Assistant Auden Alblooshi
Stylist Assistant Mason Telles
Hair Stylist for Maddie Ziegler, Megan Suri Candice Birns at A-Frame Agency
Hair Stylist for Aida Osman, Ariana Greenblatt Suzette Boozer at A-Frame Agency
Groomer for Chris Briney, Keith Powers, Iñaki Godoy Melissa DeZarate at A-Frame Agency
Makeup Artist for Maddie Ziegler, Megan Suri Miriam Nichterlein at A-Frame Agency
Makeup Artist for Aida Osman, Ariana Greenblatt Rob Rumsey at A-Frame Agency
HMU Assistant Jenna Lee
Manicurist Rachel Messick
Prop Stylist Annika Fischer
Prop Assistant Elvis Barlow-Smith
Production Hyperion
Design Director Emily Zirimis
Designer Liz Coulbourn
Visual Editor Bea Oyster
Sr. Fashion Editor Tchesmeni Leonard
Associate Fashion Editor Kat Thomas
Assistant Fashion Editor Tascha Berkowitz
Video Credits
Director/Producer Logan Tsugita
Director/Producer Catherine Mhloyi
Social Video Director/Producer Ali Farooqui
Director of Creative Dev Mi-Anne Chan
Camera Op Nick Massey Ga
Social Cover Video Editor Lindsey Fink
Site Video Header Editor Crystal Waterton
Editorial Credits
Editor-in-Chief Versha Sharma
Executive Editor Danielle Kwateng
Features Director Brittney McNamara
Talent Director Eugene Shevertalov
Senior Culture Editor P. Claire Dodson
Entertainment News Editor Kaitlyn McNab
Contributing Editor Alyssa Hardy
Associate Director of Audience Development and Analytics Mandy Velez Tatti
Sr. Social Media Manager Honestine Fraser
Social Media Manager Jillian Selzer
Copy Editors Dawn Rebecky and Leslie Lipton
Research Editor Cristina Sada
