Since she was nine years old, JoJo Siwa has been hogging the spotlight with her enormous personality and even larger bows. She first found fame on Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition in 2013, then joined the cast of Dance Moms in 2015, and eventually grew to superstardom as the face of Nickelodeon. When she joined Dancing with the Star in 2021 as the first-ever female contestant to be paired with another woman, she pretty much certified herself as an LGBTQ+ icon.
It’s easy to see JoJo’s massive success as a solo endeavour, but in reality, behind the superstar’s success is her mom(ager) calling the shots, Jessalynn Siwa.
Who is Jessalynn Siwa?
Before joining the cast of Dance Moms with her daughter, Jessalynn Siwa owned a dance studio in her hometown of Omaha, Neb., called Just Dance Co. which eventually shut down in 2016. From a young age, it was clear that JoJo had inherited her mother’s talent for dancing – Jessalynn shared in a Rolling Stone article that at just two years old JoJo “would not want to leave” the dance studio. “She was two years old; couldn’t even dance or do anything. She was like, ‘I just want to stay with you.”
As JoJo grew in fame, Jessalynn’s responsibility as a mother merged into that of a manager. The 47-year-old currently oversees her daughter’s career and is heavily involved in promoting (and profiting) off of her daughter’s success. In addition to managing her daughter’s career, she’s appeared on TV shows like JoJo’s Juice alongside her daughter, and Siwas Dance Pop Revolution. She has a podcast called Success With Jess, which thanks to her daughter’s fame, she’s been able to achieve.
What is the Dance Moms star doing now?
When she’s not working on her Success With Jess podcast, Jessalynn Siwa is busy making sure her daughter’s career is as big as it can be. That includes planning JoJo’s recent world-wide tour, organizing JoJo’s future projects, and yes, even defending her daughter from any and all harm. The former Dance Moms star recently went full on mama bear in a podcast episode, adding a dash of drama to a stew that was just beginning to cool down. In a recent instagram video, Jessalynn called out Full House star Candace Cameron Bure for being rude to her daughter years earlier, an incident that JoJo also mentioned just weeks earlier.
JoJo sparked the flame when she posted a video to her TikTok account. In the video she named Bure as the “rudest” celebrity she’d ever met. The video naturally went viral, spawning countless news stories, but Bure was quick to remedy the situation. In a follow-up Instagram video, Bure shared that she called JoJo to ask what she’d done that was so “rude.” JoJo said Bure refused to take a picture with her on at the premiere of Fuller House years earlier when JoJo was just 11 years old, and that she told the Nickelodeon star “not now, maybe later.”
Bure assured her fans that she was profusely sorry for hurting the young star’s feeling, and after a productive conversation-slash-lecture everything was “all good on the JoJo front.” However, Jessalynn Siwa begged to differ.
In a recent Success With Jess podcast episode, Jessalynn claimed the story Bure told “wasn’t quite right so here is the real version.” She posted the podcast clip to her Instagram, saying in the caption “it’s not about a simple photo, it’s about how you treat people. Real, genuine kindness always goes a long way.
“It’s super easy to quote a Bible verse when everyone is looking at you but morals are what you have when no one is looking.”
Jessalyn’s version of the story doesn’t actually differ at all from the one Bure told, citing the same incident where JoJo was told “not now, maybe later.” However, she added that Bure simply “couldn’t be bothered.”
Jessalyn also said in the post’s caption that she “talked about this on my podcast a while back,” leading one to assume the podcast episode was what inspired JoJo to remember the incident and name Bure as one of the “rudest” celebrities she ever met. That, or the podcast episode was a result of JoJo’s recent debacle with Bure. Either way, it’s clear that wherever one goes, the other will follow.
The mom(ager) has a new project in the works according to her Instagram. Just today she posted a picture of what appears to be a new logo – her last name with a star above the letter “I” in Siwa. She captioned the post with, “Something big is happening.”