“I have been so lucky and I credit that to my mom,” Jojo Siwa said on ‘Call Her Daddy’
JoJo Siwa is opening up about her experience as a child star.
Speaking to Alex Cooper on Call Her Daddy Tuesday, the former Dance Moms star reflected on her experience in the industry as a young girl and credited her mom for keeping her on the right path.
“[With] everything that’s recently come out with the Nickelodeon documentary (Quiet on Set) and just seeing child stars… there is more kids that have not had your experience,” Cooper, 29, told Siwa, 20.
The “Karma” singer responded: “I’m lucky that my bad has not been bad. My bad has been a little bit of bullying on the internet.”
The Biggest Bombshells from ‘Quiet on Set,’ the Docuseries Alleging Toxic Culture on Nickelodeon Shows.
Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV was released last month and it offers a disturbing look behind some of the most iconic children’s shows of the late 1990s and early 2000s like All That, The Amanda Show and Zoey 101 . It notably featured former child actor Drake Bell speaking out about being sexually assaulted by a Nickelodeon dialogue coach.
“Compared to people with their parents, people with their creators, people with their financials, people with their bodies being around people they didn’t want them to be around, I have been so lucky and I credit that to my mom,” Siwa continued of mom Jessalynn Siwa. “My mom has kept every psychopath out of my life.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Siwa revealed her mom recently thanked her for not leaving them “high and dry” when she turned 18 and could access her funds.
“My mom actually said something today to me that was really sweet,” Siwa said. “When you are a kid, 15 percent of every penny you make goes into a Coogan account [to protect her earnings]. My parents thought when I turned 18, I was gonna get my Coogan account money, take all of my money and have it all be mine.”
Instead, Siwa made it clear that she had no intention of doing that.
“That’s always been a fear of theirs, always has been. Just because the opportunity of me leaving them high and dry was right there. People have done it before. Child stars have done it before, but I would never do that to my family.”
In 2021, Jessalyn and JoJo opened up about their close relationship to People.
“You were like my little sidekick before we were doing work together and TV together,” Jessalynn shared at the time. “I could take you anywhere, you could go to lunch with me and my friends and you could hang, and then we would go to Target after. We were just friends.”