Do we like Sia?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful turned up in her words, and she has backed queer and immigrant causes with cash, but the Music film mess is a real mark.
Sia is the Australian singer-songwriter who hides behind the big wigs and has also tried her hand at directing. Fair warning: this card leans on the public-record episodes we could confirm in full articles, not a complete career retelling, so the backstory is thin.
The big stoush is Music, her 2021 directorial debut. Autistic people objected to the casting of Maddie Ziegler, who is not autistic, as a non-speaking autistic teen. Sia first fired back at critics on Twitter, telling them to watch the film before judging it, which did not help.
Then she changed course. In February 2021 she apologised, said she had “listened to the wrong people”, admitted her research was not thorough enough, and said a warning would run before the film about restraint of autistic people. She also said she would cut the restraint scenes from future printings. Where you land depends on whether you rate a quick, public apology or the original mistake more highly.
Her earlier defence was that she had cast 13 neuroatypical people and three trans folk in the film, which she wrote in a tweet reported by ET. Plenty of critics said that missed the point about the lead role. It is a fair summary of why this one gets an asterisk, not a clean pass.
The good stuff is not just talk. She has a habit of handing Survivor contestants large cash gifts, including 50,000 US dollars to Tai Trang plus the same again for a charity of his choice in 2016, and Jeff Probst said her total would soon pass a million. The haul is part generosity, part superfan energy, and the recipients are not complaining.
Nothing new has turned up lately on the public side of things. Her personal life has been in the courts, but that is private family business and we are leaving it out. So: a talented, generous woman with one genuinely clumsy chapter that she owned up to.