‘Dance Moms’ Producers Set Up Maddie Ziegler To Fail, Abby Lee Miller Claims In New Book

Every “Dance Moms” fan vividly remembers the day Maddie Ziegler infamously forgot her routine on stage at regionals and the hysterics that followed.

“I’ve never done this before!” Maddie told the competition's showrunners while in tears during the Season 2 episode “Abbygeddon.” “Can I please go again? Please? Please? Abby’s gonna hate me!”

Two years after the shocking episode aired, the show’s star, ALDC coach Abby Lee Miller, is now coming forward to say the dancer’s forgetfulness was a ploy staged by the Lifetime series’ producers.

According to a report from Radar Online, Miller, 47, revealed the shocking confession in a passage from her new tell-all book/parenting advice guide, “Everything I Learned About Life, I Learned In Dance Class.”

“In one episode, Maddie supposedly forgot her dance, but in reality, it was all set up by production,” Miller writes. “They set the ball in motion at the beginning of the week so that Maddie didn’t have enough studio time to finish learning her solo.”

Miller goes on to assert that Maddie, now 11, and star of Sia’s music video “Chandelier,” was barred from learning her routine by producers. According to the coach, the girl was forced to leave her Pittsburgh dance studio after learning only six to four counts of her lyrical solo, leaving her no choice but to learn two-thirds of the routine the morning of the competition.

Aside from Maddie’s last-minute dance lesson, Miller also blames the program’s jib camera operator, claiming the “Dance Moms” crew member held the equipment too close to the performers on stage, purposely interfering with their steps.

“The other thing you don’t see in the episode is that the job camera operator didn’t know what he was doing and two kids before Maddie and two kids after Maddie fan off-stage because they forgot their dances. That never happens,” Miller said. “I think that was absolutely criminal on the part of the job operator, the director, the producer and all involved.”

Despite several of her ALDC students forgetting their routines at least once over the three-year course of “Dance Moms” history, Miller insists that Maddie’s forgetfulness was by the far the most upsetting.

“I don’t want to ever see that happen to a kid,” she said. “Especially one who works so hard and usually carries my team to victory.”

“Everything I Learned About Life, I Learned In Dance Class” is in stores now. Season 4 of “Dance Moms” resumes on Lifetime starting July 29 at 9 p.m. EDT.