Sia reveals she has been diagnosed with autism

Sia has revealed that she’s been diagnosed with autism, the news coming two years after she apologized for the portrayal of an autistic person in her 2021 movie ‘Music’, which was also her directorial debut.

The movie caused big controversy after Sia hired a neurotypical actress, Maddie Ziegler, to play a nonverbal autistic teenage girl named Music. A controversial scene in the movie, in which Music is retrained, also caused backlash against the singer-turned-director.

Since then, Sia has apologized for the decision to hire Ziegler and for the scene.

“I promise, I have been listening. The motion picture MUSIC will, moving forward, have this warning at the head of the movie,” she tweeted at the time.

“MUSIC in no way condones or recommends the use of restraint on autistic people. There are autistic occupational therapists that specialize in sensory processing who can be consulted to explain safe ways to provide proprioceptive, deep-pressure feedback to help w meltdown safety.”

Sia’s autism diagnosis and sobriety

On a recent episode of ‘Rob Has a Podcast’, Sia revealed the news of both her diagnosis and her ongoing sobriety.

“I’m on the spectrum, and I’m in recovery and whatever — there’s a lot of things,” she said on the podcast. “For 45 years, I was like, ‘I’ve got to go put my human suit on.’ And only in the last two years have I become fully, fully myself.”

The feeling Sia describes of “putting on a human suit” is one that is often described by autistic people. And while autism can be detected early in childhood, many adults are diagnosed later in life.

Sia has also previously been open about entering rehab for alcohol addiction and being sober.

“Nobody can ever know and love you when you’re filled with secrets and … living in shame,” she said.

She spoke about the feeling of freedom that came from “[sitting] in a room full of strangers and [telling] 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.”

Sia gets married to Dan Bernad

Earlier this month, the ‘Chandelier’ singer married boyfriend Dan Bernad at the Domenico Dolce at Stefano Gabbana’s Villa Olivetta in Portofino, Italy.

The two got married in an intimate wedding with only six guests in attendance, including Sia and Bernad.

It’s unclear how long the two had been dating prior to their wedding, with the two keeping extremely private lives.