Sia has recently made her significant initial step as a film director, although her film career has been in a shaky spot since the beginning.
The pop singer is confronting a harsh backlash after launching her new film trailer, Music, featuring Maddy Ziegler – a prominent dancer you may remember from Dance Moms as well as Sia’s outstanding music video “Chandelier.”
Music follows Zu, a sole drug dealer, compelled to take care of her half-sister, “a disabled girl,” who uses a transmission device to communicate. Sia directed, composed, and created a 10-tracks album and scheduled to hit the theaters in February 2021.
Regardless, the trailer has not been well-responded by several people in the Autistic community, as well as Twitter users. They felt Sia’s reaction to the backlash unpleasant and defensive.
Instantly, the responses of the followers were spread out. Sia started trending on Twitter for casting Maddie Ziegler, who isn’t a disabled girl but appears as an autistic character. As of November 20, the hashtag #ActuallyAutistic was also trending.
sigh. yet another example of Hollywood casting a non-disabled actor to play a disabled character. When doing a film about Autism, hire #ActuallyAutistic folks to work on it. https://t.co/wwyxdgPYDf
— Margaux Joffe (she/her) (@MargauxJoffe) November 20, 2020
Moreover, The National Autistic Society also shared a tweet against Music.
.@sia has got this one wrong. There are so many talented autistic actors out there – like Saskia, Alex, Max, and Holly who starred in our #AutismTMI films: https://t.co/f1aWSs2nXM https://t.co/Vsts6g8728
— National Autistic Society (@Autism) November 20, 2020
Sia’s reaction to backlash and reacted to tweets throughout the day, commenting on them to watch the movie before reviewing, advising them that “Music” was created upon her ‘best friend.’ She believes featuring Maddie Ziegler was more gracious. She got frustrated by people’s tweets; then, her expression started to change.
It’s a mighty shame that someone with such a colossal platform is using it to exclude disabled and neuro diverse actors from their own narratives. I’ve been a long time fan of your work, so this is really disappointing.
— Tome Levi (@TomeLevi) November 20, 2020
Further, she began harshly answering a Twitter user who asked why disabled actors were not starred for the leading role.
Fucking bullshit. You have no fucking idea because you weren’t there and haven’t seen the movie.
— sia (@Sia) November 20, 2020
This tweet war continued between Sia and Twitter users throughout the day. Now we will see further what reviews people give after the release of the film.
