Mia Starr quit her job on the casting team of The Voice to dance at the Super Bowl. That should have been the end of the story: a huge career moment, a personal win, the kind of gig people bring up for years anytime somebody asks about the coolest thing they have ever done. Instead, Mia walked away from Jennifer Lopez’s 2020 Super Bowl LIV halftime show with memories she claims stayed with her for five years, including a look of disgust, nine hours of rehearsing shirtless, a $20 check, and the decision to send that check right back.
The RuPaul’s Drag Race season 18 contestant has described the experience as “the worst experience that I’ve ever had,” and once she started breaking down what allegedly happened during those three months of rehearsals in Miami, the story quickly went viral online. Part of that is because people already expect pressure and perfectionism around a Super Bowl performance. Still, the details Mia shared felt less like tough rehearsal culture and more like somebody counting down the days until it was finally over.
Jennifer’s Shocking Request
Mia, whose legal name is Mikey Pesante, did not enter the industry as someone new. She had already danced for Britney Spears and Rihanna, and she had been booked directly by the show’s choreographer. At the time, she had recently returned to dancing after spending a stretch working office jobs in casting, so she already knew how physically intense the rehearsal process would be.
That is why her reaction to the body comments stood out so much in her interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I get it, but I was like, bitch, this is literally day two, and we have three months, and I know my body. I’m going to snatch it back if we’re going to be dancing 60 hours a week. We have three more months, give me a break!”
According to Mia’s account, Lopez arrived on the second day of rehearsals and approached her directly while the rest of the room watched. Then came the interaction, Mia continued speaking about years later.
“She’s like, ‘Can you take off your shirt?’ I’m like, fuck. I take off my shirt, and she makes this face, followed by, ‘Guys, I need you to elevate yourselves. I need you to go to the gym and take care of yourself.” The way Mia described the moment made it sound deeply uncomfortable, especially because it happened publicly and so early into rehearsals.
Things did not end there either. “She then made us rehearse for nine hours shirtless,” Mia said. “So as I’m dancing, I’m jiggling the fuck out of the entire nine hours. It was, like, a hazing. I was like why am I here? Why am I doing this to myself?” Which only made the embarrassment worse as the day dragged on.
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Eight Hours of Work, Two Hours of “I Hate It”
According to Mia, the comments about appearance were not isolated moments. Speaking at the interview, she described what she alleged was a consistent pattern throughout the rehearsal process, especially during the final stretch of long rehearsal days.
Mia said that Lopez would arrive during the final two hours of a 10-hour rehearsal day, after the dancers had already spent eight hours working. Then, according to Mia, Lopez would look at everything they had built and say “I hate it” before giving what Mia described as “this big spiel.” After that, changes would be made to the choreography and staging.
Mia acknowledged that changes are completely normal in productions that large. What bothered her, according to her account, was the repeated criticism of the adult dancers’ appearance, while Lopez, as Mia described her, was “super sweet to the kids” involved in the performance.
As rehearsals continued, Mia said the entire experience began to feel emotionally draining rather than exciting. “I’m busting my ass. This dream job wasn’t what I expected in the sense that this is the biggest moment of a dancer’s career, and it felt like hell up until the point of the performance.”
A $20 Check Returned
By Mia’s account, the performance itself went well, and Lopez was happy with the final result. Then things took another turn around the release of Lopez’s Netflix documentary Halftime. According to Mia, the dancers learned they had been filmed throughout rehearsals and were asked at the last minute to sign appearance releases without payment attached.
“I was like, no, you didn’t put me through all of that to not pay me,” Mia said. “I didn’t sign the paper. There were a few of us that didn’t sign.”
Despite that, Mia still appeared in the documentary. Then a $20 check arrived, which just made the situation feel even more insulting to her.
“I told my agent, ‘You know what, actually, you can just please send this back, they clearly need it more than I do,'” she said. “I sent it back, because it’s super insulting. I just had to laugh at that point, I was like, this is unreal.”
Later, according to her, another offer from Lopez’s camp came through, but by then she had already decided she wanted no further involvement. “I said no. I was like, nope, no, no, no, ever.”
This Particular Record Has Been Playing for a While
Mia’s account became part of a much longer conversation surrounding Lopez’s reputation behind the scenes. Reports of an alleged “no-eye-contact” rule involving staff have circulated since at least 2012, and the rumors grew large enough that Lopez eventually addressed them herself.
“I feel I never deserved it,” she said in one interview, “because I’ve always been a hard worker, on time, doing what I’m supposed to do.”
Still, stories about difficult interactions continued surfacing over the years. A flight attendant once told Star magazine that when he asked Lopez what she wanted to drink, she allegedly responded through her assistant instead of speaking directly to him.
“He wouldn’t even look at me,” he told the publication. “It was sad, she seems so sweet in her movies.”
Then there was actress Heather Morris from Glee, who described an unusual audition experience on a podcast. After eight hours of dancing at an open call for one of Lopez’s tours, Morris claimed Lopez asked every Virgo in the room to raise their hand and then sent them home. Lopez never publicly explained the decision.
More recently, Meghan McCain described Lopez during a 2024 podcast episode as “deeply unpleasant” and claimed her entourage was larger than the President’s. McCain also alleged that one member of Lopez’s team had the sole responsibility of holding a lit mirror for her makeup. Hmn.
Jenny From the Block Would Not Have Done This
Years before Mia shared her story, Lopez herself spoke publicly about being pressured by her former manager to lose weight. At the time, Lopez recalled pushing back against those comments and described the situation very directly.
“I was a dancer, and I was athletic. It was a fight. It was definitely a fight.” She eventually fired that manager.
That history is part of why Mia’s allegations sparked such strong reactions online. According to Mia’s account, the same woman who once resisted body criticism was now allegedly telling dancers to remove their shirts on the second day of rehearsals and encouraging them to go to the gym.
Lopez has not responded publicly to Mia’s allegations. Still, the dancers standing behind the main performance that night were people who left stable jobs, worked exhausting rehearsal schedules, trained constantly, and later discovered they had appeared in a Netflix documentary tied to the show. For Mia, what should have been the biggest moment of her career became a story she did not fully tell until five years later.