JoJo Siwa’s Dance Moms teacher and close friend Abby Lee Miller gives her verdict on her headline-grabbing romance with Love Island alum Chris Hughes and maintains it’s ‘no showmance’
Celebrity Big Brother couple JoJo Siwa and Chris Hughes will start a family together – according to one of her closest friends, as OK! reports. This insight is certainly in keeping with Chris’s own comments in an interview earlier this month, in which he admitted to being “obsessed” with JoJo and confirmed they both want kids.
The US singer, 22, may have identified as a lesbian for most of her adult life, but everything changed when she met former Love Island star Chris, 32, on CBB in April. At the time she was in a relationship with actor Kath Ebbs, but she shocked CBB viewers by forming a close bond with Chris during the show and then splitting up with Kath soon after leaving the house.
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And JoJo’s former mentor, Abby Lee Miller, who ran the dance company in the show Dance Moms which launched JoJo’s career, says she always felt her protégé was more attracted to men than women.
JoJo made a TikTok video earlier this month to promote her new single Bette Davis Eyes. Poking fun at earlier rumours circulating that she was pregnant, she proceeded to play a game of Two Truth And A Lie, asking fans which statement is a lie: “1) I’ve never smoked a [cigarette] 2) I’m pregnant 3) This song comes out on Spotify Friday.”
Dance teacher and choreographer Abby, chatting to new at comedian Heather McDonald’s Juicy Scoop podcast 10th anniversary party in Westwood, Los Angeles last month, said JoJo and Chris are genuinely in love and it’s definitely not a showmance.
Abby, 59, who helped Nebraska-born JoJo shine in her reality show before she signed up with Nickelodeon, spent time with close friend JoJo and Chris recently during a work trip to Universal Studios in Orlando. She confirmed the pair have met each other’s parents, with JoJo’s mother Jessalynn approving of the former Love Island favourite.
Insisting that JoJo and Chris are genuinely in love, Abby said, “JoJo is absolutely smitten. It is like she’s in junior high and he is the homecoming king and the quarterback and all of that mixed up. She looks at him and bats her eyelashes. It’s adorable.”
It seems JoJo has always harboured a desire to have a family of her own, according to Abby. “Absolutely, she wants kids – tons of kids,” Abby said, adding that the Karma singer would be a “great” mother who would encourage her children to head into showbiz. “It’s going to be a Disney World-type thing, you know what I mean? Those kids will be everywhere and do everything. It will be a fun life.”
JoJo has previously talked about being a lesbian, but Abby said she always suspected she was attracted to men from an early age. Smiling, she recalled, “Even as a little kid, I thought, ‘She likes the hot guys.’ That was something we had in common – we like the hot guys.”
Talking about Chris’s attributes, Abby said she believes his maturity is a key factor. “He’s a bit older than her,” she said. “He’s been around the block. He knows how to treat her, whereas a high school boy isn’t going to know that. Even someone her age, at 21 or 22, isn’t going to treat a girl with the respect and niceties that Chris has learned along the way.“
Abby also hit back at the cynics who have suggested their relationship is simply a ploy to stay in the spotlight. “No way, that is the real JoJo – that’s the person I know,“ she insisted. “She is smitten and, you know, she jumps into everything fast. I remember the day she called me saying she had her first kiss. And she was jumping around the house, freaking out, telling everybody about her first kiss and she was, like, 17-years-old. That usually happens when you’re 13 or 14.
“So because of being homeschooled, because of being in the entertainment industry and her life as we know it, she wasn’t around those junior high boys. So meeting Chris and doing Big Brother – that was like her first foray into that and she’s just absolutely head over heels.”
But Abby said JoJo isn’t planning to settle permanently in the UK with Chris, who grew up on a farm in Gloucestershire and got his first taste of fame reaching the final of Love Island in 2017.
“She travels so much and she sold her house here in LA – I just think that she is going to do this and do that and go here, go there and they can travel together,” said Abby. “They can go anywhere in the world. I don’t see her living in London for the rest of her life, absolutely not. And I don’t see him being able to come here. It’s not that easy to come to America.”
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