Sia Talks Backlash Over Her Controversial Film ‘Music’: ‘I Was Suicidal’

usmagazine.com:

A difficult time. Sia opened up about the toll the public backlash to her film, Music, took on her in a new interview.“I was suicidal and relapsed and went to rehab,” the musician, 46, recalled to The New York Times on Wednesday, January 19.Sia explained to the outlet that it was her friend Kathy Griffin who helped her recover.

The comedian, 61, arranged a “dinner date” with Sia at a popular Los Angeles restaurant so that the pair could generate some more positive headlines. “She saved my life,” the singer added.The film, which was Sia’s directorial debut, sparked a great deal of criticism thanks to the casting of frequent collaborator Maddie Ziegler as a nonverbal autistic teenage girl.

Several actors with autism spoke out against the film, condemning Sia’s decision to cast a neurotypical actress in the lead role as well as the way Music depicted autism.Following the initial release of Music‘s trailer in November 2019, the “Chandelier” singer defended her film and the choice to give Ziegler, 19, the lead role. “I actually tried working with a beautiful young girl non verbal on the spectrum and she found it unpleasant and stressful,” Sia wrote on Twitter at the time. “So that’s why I cast Maddie.” In a series of tweets responding to social media critics, the Grammy nominee added that she “spent three f—king years researching” the project.“I cast thirteen neuroatypical people, three trans folk, and not as f—king prostitutes or drug addicts but as doctors, nurses and singers,” she wrote. “F—king sad nobody’s even seen the dang movie.

My heart has always been in the right place.”Several members of the autistic community also called out Music for including a scene in which the titular character is restrained while having a