JoJo Siwa talks befriending Kim Kardashian, achieving fame after ‘Dance Moms’: ‘The future looks incredible’
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At age 15, former “Dance Moms” student JoJo Siwa says she’s living her best life.
The teen pop sensation who has more than 9 million subscribers on YouTube and over 7 million followers on Instagram is gearing up to hit the road and tour across the country. If that weren’t enough, the singer and dancer is slated to appear in Nickelodeon SlimFest, a family-friendly music festival taking place in Chicago on June 8th and June 9th. And somehow in between, Siwa managed to develop a close bond with Kim Kardashian and her 5-year-old daughter North West.
Siwa spoke to Fox News about Kardashian contacting her out of nowhere, why she’s not in a hurry to grow up anytime soon and how her family manages to give her a normal upbringing despite fame.
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Fox News: Kim Kardashian of all people contacted you about her daughter North West. What exactly happened?
JoJo Siwa: Yes. Kim posted something on Twitter that just said, "LOL @ North's bow. She's obsessed with ..." and she tagged me @itsjojosiwa. I was like, "Oh my gosh! North West is a JoJo fan." I was like this is everything. So, with Nickelodeon, I had a big gigantic package sent to Kim, and of course to North, of JoJo merchandise. She loved it.
She posted it on her Instagram story, and so I just messaged her on Instagram. I just responded to the story, and was like, "Oh my gosh, love it. If you want me to surprise North, or if North ever wants to be in a video just let me know, and I would love to." I gave her my number, and I was like just text me. She said, "Awesome, I'll text you in the morning." I was like, OK, sure, I'll go with it. And now we filmed something.
Fox News: You’ll be joining other celebrities for the Nickelodeon SlimeFest. Who are you looking forward to seeing the most, and why?
Siwa: There's going to be a lot of really good people there. There's going to be T-Pain, Bebe Rexha, and Pitbull. I think Pitbull, I love Pitbull. My dad loves Pitbull.
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Fox News: Why is it important now more than ever to offer family-friendly programming?
Siwa: You know, I think there can be a lot of things on the Internet right now that say they’re family-friendly, and then they aren’t family-friendly. So, it's really important to me to make sure that everything that I put out there is family-friendly.
I think it's important because kids need to stay kids. Kids don't need to grow up as they think, maybe, they should. Or as they think they want to. You know, you only live your childhood once. You only live every age once. You only live your life once. I think that it's good for kids to stay kids, and for kids to stay young, and stay healthy. So, I try to help with that.
Fox News: Many 15-16-year-olds want to rebel and look older, but you don't. Why?
Siwa: I really have a strong look at life. I look at my life and I'm like, “Where do I want to be in 10 years? Where do I want to be in 20 years? Where do I want to be in 40 years? Where do I want to be in 60 years? I see like OK, in 20 years I'm going to be 35, what do I want to be doing?” But right now I'm only 15, so let's stay 15. I'll just age as I grow, but right now I'm just 15 and living my best life. I love rainbows. I love unicorns. I love sparkles, and I don't want to change any of that.
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Fox News: How do your parents keep you grounded?
Siwa: My family is awesome. I love them so, so, so, so much. They keep me grounded really well. They keep me normal. You know, like at dinner, we'll play cards, and we'll just talk about life. We'll just have fun. We're just such a close family. Literally, my brother is probably my best friend. My mom is my best friend. My dad is my best friend. We've just stayed the same. To them I'm not some celebrity kid, I'm not some famous kid. To them, I'm just my brother’s little sister. I'm my dad's little girl. I'm my mom's little kid. I'm just my family to them.
Fox News: How do you find that balance of constantly being on the road, but also being a normal kid?
Siwa: The thing with me is my whole life has been this. I've either been working towards getting this since I was 2 years old or actually when I started this when I was 9 years old. So, as weird as it may seem, I'm not normal. This is what I do. This is what I love to do.
I'm a performer. I'm here for this. So, performing, and rehearsing, and working hard, and singing, and the recording studio, and actually physically than being on stage that is my fun. That is what I get to do for fun. That is what I enjoy, and what I love to do. So, it's cool that, that is also my career. That is also what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life, hopefully, if everything goes good. Let's go good with it.
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Fox News: How do you cope with bullies on social media?
Siwa: It can definitely be hard with bullies online. For me, I don't want to give the mean people the time. If I see a hate comment and right next to it is a nice comment I don't want to listen to that one hate comment, to those 10 out of a 100 hate comments. If I'm not going to give the nice comments the time, why should I give the hate comments the time?
Fox News: What do you think the future holds for you?
Siwa: I think the future for me is, from what I see, it looks incredible. I think the future specifically for me just means getting bigger, and getting better, and getting stronger. I'm so passionate about what I do, and I just see myself growing it explosively like no other. I'm performing for audiences the sizes from 3,000 to some of them are 12,000.
I see myself then, hopefully, one day which would be my absolute dream come true, going to the biggest arenas in history possible. Going to stadiums, having 70,000 people at a show. Oh my gosh, that was a gigantic number, don't know where that came from? It would just be incredible.