JoJo Siwa Doubles Down on Candace Cameron Bure Criticism

JoJo Siwa stands by her critique of Candace Cameron Bure after the Full House star’s comments about “traditional marriage.” The Dance Moms alum, 20, publicly condemned Bure, 47, in November 2022 for her decision as chief creative officer for the conservative-leaning Great American Family network to not include LGBTQ+ couples in its programming. 

Siwa, who previously had called Bure the “rudest” celebrity she had ever encountered in a viral TikTok, shared why she had been so vocal about the Aurora Teagarden alum in a conversation with Nick Viall, 42, on his Viall Files podcast Thursday. Siwa explained that she found it incredibly offensive to “specifically make movies that had no representation of LGBTQIA [people].”

“It’s fine if you are doing it because it’s just your movie’s storyline and it’s just it is what it is, like, not everything needs to be gay essentially,” she added. “But when you’re doing it out of spite to say that, ‘Too much is about LGBTQIA and you guys suck and I want to make a movie about traditional marriage and you’re not traditional,’ that got to me a little bit.”

After reading the article in which Bure made her comments about marriage, Siwa said she was able to make peace with her feelings about a celebrity whom she had previously admired. “It gave me a little sense of, ‘OK, you and her are never going to agree, you and her are never going to be friends [or] get along,” the Dancing With the Stars alum shared. “I’m never going to be able to change her, she’s not gonna be able to change me, we can both just live life.”

Siwa added, “But I wish she was able to be a little more open, a little more accepting. I’m OK with calling her out in the way that I did,” noting that Bure’s comments were “messed up” in that they implied people in the LGBT+ community couldn’t be “good, loving Christians.” The YouTube star had previously called Bure’s comments “rude and hurtful to a whole community of people” back when they first made headlines in 2022. 

The former Hallmark Channel star then took to her Instagram to clarify her comments, saying that she didn’t mean to offend anyone. “I am a devoted Christian. Which means that I believe that every human being bears the image of God,” she wrote, in part. “Because of that, I am called to love all people, and I do. If you know me, you know that I am a person who loves fiercely and indiscriminately. My heart yearns to build bridges and bring people one step closer to God, to love others well, and to simply be a reflection of God’s huge love for all of us.”