Abby Lee Miller made quite a name for herself as she fronted the Lifetime reality series Dance Moms, which premiered on the network back in 2011 and followed the Abby Lee Dance Company’s junior competition team gearing up for upcoming performances and new routines each week.
The original team consisted of Maddie, Mackenzie Ziegler, Nia Sioux, Chloe Lukasiak, Brooke Hyland and Paige Hyland while Nickelodeon star JoJo Siwa had filled in for Ziegler who was regularly booked to work alongside singer-songwriter Sia, having starred in a handful of her music videos over the past decade.
It’s undeniable that Miller knows a thing or two when it comes to turning children into full-on stars, and while the brunette did a terrific job at coaching her girls to be the absolute best in their field, the 55-year-old was hiding a lot of legal troubles behind the scenes that eventually landed her behind bars.
How Has Abby’s Life Changed Since ‘Dance Moms’
It goes without saying that the show’s success had turned Miller into a star herself. Dance Moms had become one of the highest-rated programs on Lifetime, and given that many of its child stars were getting booked for work outside of the show, it was a true testament to the dedication and hard work that takes place a the dance company.
Miller wasn’t just a reality star; she was coaching the girls to be their absolute best so that they can go on and enjoy long-standing careers in Hollywood, which most of them did end up doing.
Dance Moms ran for seven seasons up until February 2017, having also inspired a number of spin-offs, which included Dance Moms: Miami and, of course, Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition.
But the following month, Miller announced that she was leaving the show in an unexpected revelation that was brought upon by her piling legal troubles. Just under two months after her announcement, she was sentenced to face one year and a day in prison, on top of two years of supervised release, after pleading guilty to fraud charges.
According to People, she had attempted to hide $775,000 in earnings from Lifetime and its spin-offs during Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Supposedly, the money was being kept in several secret bank accounts between 2012 and 2013 while divvying $120,000 and having her pals carry her money in plastic bags in their luggage in the summer of 2014.
Talking about her fraud charges, Miller explained to the publication in 2017, “I made mistakes and I trusted people, but ultimately I have to take responsibility. I have to take the blame. I have to take the punishment.
“I went from being a dance teacher from Pittsburgh who never ran a family business, who never did the books, who never wrote the checks out. When [my dad] died, I had these temporary people in there, now we’re finding out that money was going right and left, and I didn’t know that.”
Things only worsened for Miller when she was then diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in April 2018 and was left wheelchair-bound following multiple surgeries.
With all of that, however, she was determined to make her TV comeback following the news that she was finally cancer-free, prompting her to return for the eighth series of Dance Moms in June 2019.
Miller went through a heartbreaking time battling her cancer, which required over five surgeries to complete. In fact, things had gotten to such drastic measures with the procedures that Miller at one point thought she was going to die when she then had to undergo surgery for her spine.
"I remember saying to the anesthesiologist, 'Just tell me I'm gonna see you when I wake up,' and he said, 'I can't tell you that, ma'am,'" she shares. "That's when I knew, and then I heard [Dr. Melamed] say something that I didn't know, he said, 'Get the theater ready, I'm going in,' and I didn't know that the operating room was called the theater and I thought I died. I'm dead already. You know, I can still hear them talking.”
Her doctor, Dr. Melamed, said in response, "I was like, 'You know what, not on my watch. It's not happening,'" he recalls. "I said, 'We're going in.' I called my wife, I said, 'Honey, I'm not coming home tonight.'
“I said, 'I'm gonna be there all night. I'm gonna be operating. I'm not coming home tonight. This is not gonna happen on my watch. I don't care what it takes. I'm gonna do whatever it takes,' so I was optimistic that we were gonna save her. That's how I always like to look at it.”
Miller is still said to be worth $2 million, according to Celeb Net Worth.