Patricia Grisafi
In a recent interview, Sia revealed that she had been suicidal and checked herself into rehab after she received backlash over her 2021 film Music. The film, which was written and directed by Sia, told the story of a teenager with autism. However, disability rights activists criticized Sia’s choice to cast an actress who was not on the autism spectrum.
Sia told The New York Times that comedian Kathy Griffin had come to her aid, helping her come out of a deep depression.
“I was suicidal and relapsed and went to rehab,” Sia said. “She saved my life.”
Sia said that Griffin took her to Craig’s, a Hollywood favorite, so the paparazzi would take their photo together and report on that instead.
“We were joking that we were on ‘Survivor: Hollywood,'” Sia explained.
Actress Chloe Hayden, among other performers, said that casting Maddie Ziegler — a neurotypical actor — to play an autistic character was “undermining autistic people’s capabilities and making us out to be infants.”
When criticism came out about her casting choices, Sia initially defended herself: “I cast thirteen neuroatypical people, three trans folk, and not as f**king prostitutes or drug addicts but as doctors, nurses, and singers.”
Later, however, Sia apologized for her choices. According to Rolling Stone, she tweeted: “I’m sorry. 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.”
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