Sia Announces ‘I’m on the Autism Spectrum’

Sia disclosed on a new episode of “Rob Has a Podcast” (via People) that she is on the Autism spectrum, a revelation made two years after the pop star generated backlash for casting a neurotypical actor (her frequent collaborato Maddie Ziegler) as a nonverbal autistic teenage girl in her feature directorial debut “Music.”

“I’m on the spectrum, and I’m in recovery and whatever — there’s a lot of things,” Sia said, adding, “For 45 years, I was like, ‘I’ve got to go put my human suit on.’ And only in the last two years have I become fully, fully myself.”

While Sia has previously discussed being sober and entering rehab for alcohol addiction, this is the first time she has publicly discussed being on the autism spectrum. She said she found relief in “knowing about which neuroatypicality [she] may have or may not have.”

“Nobody can ever know and love you when you’re filled with secrets and…living in shame,” Sia added. “And when we finally sit in a room full of strangers and tell them our deepest, darkest, most shameful secrets, and everybody laughs along with us, and we don’t feel like pieces of trash for the first time in our lives, and we feel seen for the first time in our lives for who we actually are, and then we can start going out into the world and just operating as humans and human beings with hearts and not pretending to be anything.”

Sia’s 2021 movie “Music” centered on a newly-sober drug dealer (Kate Hudson) reconnecting with her younger, nonverbal autistic half-sister (Ziegler). Several members of the autism community spoke to The New York Times ahead of the film’s release and condemned it due to Ziegler’s casting and the portrayal of autism in the movie.

Ashley Wool called Sia’s movie “something that’s doing active harm to people,” while actor Chloé Hayden added that Sia’s casting is “undermining autistic people’s capabilities and making us out to be infants. Second, if your film is about inclusion, but you’re not making the actual film set inclusive, it completely belittles the entire point.”

Film critics also panned the film. Matthew Rozsa of Salon called the movie “a baffling and patronizing cringefest of ableist minstrelsy,” while Joseph Stanichar of Paste wrote, “Even doing research and writing an essay on the film’s problematic elements pre-release were not enough to prepare me for how harmful ‘Music’ is to autistic people.”

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Sia, who revealed last year that she became suicidal and went to rehab amid the film’s backlash, originally defended Ziegler’s casting. She told Australia’s 10 News First (via Yahoo Entertainment) that she “actually tried working with a beautiful young girl nonverbal on the spectrum” but “found it unpleasant and stressful” because the character as written was too demanding. In the film, Ziegler’s character is at the center of elaborate fantastical dance sequences.

“The character is based completely on my neuro-atypical friend,” Sia added. “He found it too stressful being nonverbal, and I made this movie with nothing but love for him and his mother.”

Sia later announced the movie would be released with a warning. “I promise [I] have been listening,” she wrote on Twitter. “The motion picture ‘Music’ will, moving forward, have this warning at the head of the movie: ‘Music in no way condones or recommends the use of restraint on autistic people. There are autistic occupational therapists that specialize in sensory processing who can be consulted to explain safe ways to provide proprioceptive, deep-pressure feedback to help with meltdown safety.’”

Sia then tweeted, “I’m sorry,” an apology presumably aimed at the members of the autism community who took issue with her film. Hudson, meanwhile, told Jimmy Kimmel around the same time that the movie was generating an “important conversation to have.”

“I think when people see the film, you know that they will see the amount of love and sensitivity that was put into it,” Hudson said. “When I hear that anybody feels left out, I feel terrible…It’s not a sound bite conversation. It’s an ongoing important dialogue to be had about neurotypical actors portraying neurodivergent characters…It should be a continuous conversation.”

“Music” bombed at the box office with just $645,000 on a reported production budget of $16 million.