Maddie Ziegler Opens Up About Sia's 'Elastic Heart' Video After Controversy

Maddie Ziegler is turning heads once again with Shia LaBeouf in another Sia video – “Elastic Heart“.

The 12-year-old dancer chatted with Cosmo about the new video that sparked controversy after it’s debut earlier this week. Check out what she had to share:

On teaming back up with Sia: “We’ve always stayed in touch ever since the first Sia video because we became really close and we have such a nice bond. Sia just said, ‘Well, I don’t want to have any other team,’ so she just kept everyone – same choreographer [Ryan Heffington], same everything. Because we’re like a family now so she liked it this way, just us.”

On shooting the video with Shia LaBeouf: “I was like, ‘Wait, who’s Shia?’ So I looked up pictures of him and I was like, ‘Oh, okay, he’s familiar.’ Then they were like, ‘He was in Even Stevens and the movie Holes’ and I was just freaking out. I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m having a Disney moment here.’”

On Shia’s dancing skills: “[Laughs] I was confused [when they told me he was in the video], I was like, ‘Wait, does he dance?’ And they were like, ‘Ehhh, no.’ To be honest, he wasn’t that bad at dancing. He gets it because he’s an actor so he needs to learn to remember lines so it’s the same with learning dances. I mean, it wasn’t full dancing for him and even for me it wasn’t full dancing. We did a lot of acting and a lot of running around and chasing each other. It was definitely one of the most tiring things I’ve ever done in my life.”

On the direction she got for the video: “She wanted me to imagine I’m a wolf, and we’d been living in the cage for a while. That’s why I’m always hissing in the video and chasing and crawling. He’s just normal. In the beginning of the video I am the strong one, trying to beat him down and then towards the end when he lifts me and throws me around and stuff, that’s when he starts to battle me back. But by the end we’ve become friends, I guess you could call it.”

On if she kept in touch with Shia: “I would say so. I mean, he texted me today and told me, ‘Brilliant job on the video.’ And I was like, ‘Who is this?’ I don’t even know how he got my number! He’s like, ‘Shia.’ And I felt bad. I was like, ‘Oops, didn’t realize that.’”