Controversy: Sia apologises to autism community for controversial film Music

Australian pop star Sia has apologised for casting a neurotypical actor as a nonverbal autistic girl in her film Music, and for scenes depicting the use of restraints on autistic people.

Her directorial debut Music attracted controversy online on Wednesday after it was nominated for two Golden Globes.

It was criticised for the casting of dancer Maddie Ziegler in an autistic role, as well as for restraint scenes.

Sia has now said a restraint warning would be added to the film’s start.

Variety said the singer had also tweeted that all restraint scenes will be removed from public screenings of the film.

“I plan to remove the restraint scenes from all future printings. I listened to the wrong people and that is my responsibility, my research was clearly not thorough enough, not wide enough,” she tweeted, shortly before deleting her account which had about 6m followers.