Dance Moms Star Maddie Ziegler Landed Her First Film Role (With Sia, No Less)

Maddie Ziegler, the 12-year-old Dance Moms star and performer whose talents and propensity with wigs have made her a muse to the pop musician Sia, is now taking her skills to film for the first time—in a role developed, of course, by the pop musician Sia.

In a panel at the Venice Film Festival this week, Sia discussed her plans for Sister, a screenplay she wrote and in which she will direct Ziegler in the starring role:

Based on a one-page story she wrote eight years ago, Sia said, “I was too embarrassed to tell anyone I wanted to make a movie because I thought it would be seen as a vanity project because I was a singer. … And then last year, after I made the ‘Chandelier’ video, I realized that I was pretty good at directing, so I felt a little bit braver.”

Having no past experience in the field, Sia sought help for her first go at screenwriting. “So first, I paid a guy from a juice bar to help me write it, who had gone to film school, and it turned out it wasn’t quite right,” she said. She then turned to another friend, children’s book author Dallas Clayton. “He and I spent 3 1/2 weeks just on the sofa, mapping it out.”

Though she did not say when she’ll commence filming, or even if she has, the paparazzi-shy musician has thus far fairly effectively cast Ziegler as a proxy for herself, dressing her in blunt-cut blonde wigs that are nearly identical to her own and letting her act out both their emotions in a trilogy of videos, as well as on the Grammys with Kristin Wiig.

Beyond that, Ziegler is clearly at ease in front of the camera, having been the teacher’s pet and primary focal point of Dance Moms since she was just eight, and since been cast in a variety of commercials and modeling gigs, including recent spots on the Ralph Lauren Kids runway and this Target advert for back-to-school denim (come on, you know you’ve seen it).

Though the plot of Sister has not yet been revealed, is it a secret YouTube Dance Moms illuminati hint that Ziegler considers wearing a “Sister” nameplate necklace to the Teen Choice Awards in the following meandering stylist video? If anyone can tell us, it’s the Dance Moms truthers, en masse and ready to let us know what’s going down in the mysterious world of this famous tween.