Singer Sia Reveals Autism Diagnosis, Two Years After Facing Film Backlash
Singer Sia has revealed that she has been diagnosed with autism, couple of years after she had faced backlash for her depiction of the illness in the film 'Music'.
Singer Sia has revealed that she has been diagnosed with autism. This revelation comes two years after she faced backlash for her depiction of the illness in the film 'Music'. Speaking to Rob Has A Podcast, Sia said that her diagnosis has brought a sense of relief. “I’m on the spectrum, and I’m in recovery and whatever — there’s a lot of things. For 45 years, I was like, I’ve got to go put my human suit on," she said.
"And only in the last two years have I become fully, fully myself. Nobody can ever know and love you when you’re filled with secrets and…living in shame. And when we finally sit in a room full 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, and then we can start going out into the world and just operating as humans and human beings with hearts and not pretending to be anything," she added.
Sia is best known as a singer-songwriter, with her most famous tracks being 'Chandelier', 'Titanium' and 'Cheap Thrills'.
In 2021, she directed a musical drama titled 'Music', and it was about a woman who ends up becoming the sole caretaker for her half-sister, a teenager suffering from non-verbal autism.
Sia was then widely criticised for casting the neuro-typical actress Maddie Ziegler in the main role, reported the BBC.
One scene also sparked outrage and it followed Ziegler's character being held in a controversial, face-down prone restraint during an episode of overstimulation. This type of restraint can pose a risk of physical harm and in extreme case, death by suffocation.
The film was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards in 2021, and it was then that Sia decided to apologise in a series of tweets.
"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," she had said.
