If you’ve watched one of Netflix’s newest movies, “Tall Girl” and are also a fan of Dance Moms, the star of the film may look slightly familiar to you.
Actress Ava Michelle, who plays “Tall Girl” Jodi in the film, is also a singer, model, and trained dancer.
As Newsweek reports, she was actually trained by infamous dance teacher Abby Lee Miller from 2014 to 2016, which is why she may seem somewhat familiar to Dance Mom’s fans.
The premise of “Tall Girl,” is about a 16-year-old high school student who stands six-feet, one-inches tall and hates that she’s known, teased, and ridiculed as the tall girl at her high school.
During her time on the reality show, “Dance Moms,” she went by the name Ava Cota. And as Lifetime’s YouTube videos reveal, Ava was literally kicked off the Abby Lee Dance Company because she was too tall.
In the above clip, Miller is seen yelling at Ava, saying:
“Ava, you’re too tall for us today. You’re cut. Thank you, you can go.”
Then on season five, after being cut from the ALDC, Ava performed a dance on the show that represented the harsh words Miller has said to her in the past. She also talked about the criticism she received on social media for being so tall and so thin.
While a contestant on “So You Think You Can Dance,” Ava cried over the harsh comments:
“I actually have been kicked off a team because I was too tall. And, I’ve been attacked a lot of social media. It’s hard because they were also saying I was too thin and they were saying that my mom wasn’t feeding me and all of this stuff. It’s not true.
So I’m just trying to show people that you can be different and you can do what you love to do and you can be amazing.”
Now at 17 years old, Ava’s journey has somewhat come full circle with her first-ever featured film, “Tall Girl,” which spreads the exact same message.
Amazing.