In 2021, Sia received lots of backlash for the portrayal of autism in her film Music. She eventually apologized, saying, “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.”
The pop singer appeared on an episode of Rob Has A Podcast in conversation with Survivor contestant Carolyn Wiger. “I’m on the spectrum and I’m in recovery and I’m whatever, there’s a lot of things…” she revealed. “Being in recovery and knowing about which neuroatypicality you may have or may not have, I think one of the greatest things is that nobody can ever know you and love you when you’re filled with secrets and living in shame.”
She added, “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. Then we can go out into the world just operating as human beings with hearts … not pretending to be anything.”
She concluded, “For 45 years, I’ve felt like I have to go put my human suit on. And only in the last two years have I become fully, fully myself.”