The singer, who faces pushback over Maddie Ziegler portraying an autistic character, was once defensive of her project.
When autism awareness advocates criticized her film Music, Sia was fiercely defensive of her project. The music icon received a wave of backlash for her controversial film that stars Maddie Zigler as a nonverbal autistic child alongside Kate Hudson Hamilton’s Leslie Odom Jr. People didn’t think that non-autistic actor should have been cast in the film, and critics also weren’t pleased with how the character was portrayed. After picking up two Gold Globe Award nominations, Sia returned to her Twitter account to backtrack on her previous reaction and to say that she’s made a few changes to her film.
“I promise, have been listening,” Sia reportedly tweeted. “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 specialise in sensory processing who can be consulted to explain safe ways to provide proprioceptive, deep-pressure feedback to help w meltdown safety.”
“I’m sorry,” Sia added before speaking about a restraint scene that caused advocates to condemn how the moment of conflict in the film was handled. “I plan to remove the restraint scenes from all future printings. I listened to the wrong people and that is my responsibility, my research was clearly not thorough enough, not wide enough.”
Still, Sia was targeted and soon, the singer deactivated her Twitter account altogether. Check out a few responses below.
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