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Yesterday (February 3), Sia’s directorial debut Music was nominated for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy at the 2021 Golden Globe Awards. In addition, its star Kate Hudson was nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. The nominations prompted new backlash against the film that resulted in Sia deleting her Twitter account.
According to Variety, Sia tweeted that she had “been listening” to criticism of Music and that future public screenings of the film will begin with the following message:
In addition, Sia reportedly tweeted, “I’m sorry,” and, “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.”
Pitchfork has reached out to representatives for Sia for further comment and more information.
Sia has been criticized for casting a neurotypical actor, Maddie Ziegler, as a nonverbal autistic person in Music. She responded to the criticism on Twitter back in November, writing, “I actually tried working with a a beautiful young girl non-verbal on the spectrum and she found it unpleasant and stressful. So that’s why I cast Maddie.”
Sia also wrote at the time, “Casting someone at (the character’s) level of functioning was cruel, not kind, so I made the executive decision that we would do our best to lovingly represent the community…. I did try. It felt more compassionate to use Maddie. That was my call.”
Sia also defended Music by stating that there “are 13 people on the spectrum in the movie,” and that she “had two people on the spectrum advising [her] at all times.”
In response to Sia’s tweets, autism rights activists launched a Change.org petition asking Hanway Films to cancel the movie’s release, as Variety notes.