Two years after Music controversy, Sia shares autism diagnosis

The singer’s film about a young girl on the autism spectrum, Music, was so widely panned that Sia apologized

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  May 31, 2023 | 8:44pm
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Two years after Music controversy, Sia shares autism diagnosis
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Two years after apologizing for the depiction of neurodivergent people in her film Music, Sia is taking the parodically massive wig off. On the Survivor recap podcast, friend of the show Sia popped on to a Zoom call to chat with contestant Carolyn Wiger about the competition and to offer her $100,000 for being Sia’s favorite contestant in “forever.” Sia also revealed her own recent autism diagnosis for the first time, something she only learned within the last two years.

“I’m on the spectrum, and I’m in recovery—there’s a lot of things,” she said. “I’ve felt like 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 myself.”

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In 2021, Sia faced a backlash from the autism community for casting a neurotypical actor, Maggie Ziegler, as a non-speaking singer who is on the autism spectrum. Though Sia claimed the character was based on a neurodivergent friend, some criticized the film and its director for the depiction of those with autism, particularly scenes featuring a “face-down prone restraint,” which can suffocate and kill people. Future screenings featured a warning about the dangers of such restraints.

Despite a series of begrudging half-apologies and shit-stirring insults, Sia eventually relented and agreed to remove the scenes of restraint from “all future printings,” saying she “listened to the wrong people.”

Sia, who is a recovering alcoholic, related to Wiger, she said, namely for being herself on the show—or as Sia put it, “The kook in me recognizes the kook in you.”

“I think one of the greatest things is that nobody can ever know you and love you when you’re filled with secrets and living in shame,” Sia said.

“And when we finally sit in a roomful 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 – then we can start going out into the world and operating as human beings with hearts, and not pretending to be anything.”

[via BBC]

 
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