Record scratch! Alyson Stoner is clearing the air on why she didn’t make a guest appearance during Missy Elliott’s Coachella performance earlier this year.
The actress, 31, and the four-time Grammy winner, 54, share a decades-long history that goes all the way back to when Stoner showcased her iconic moves as a 9-year-old dancer in Elliott’s 2002 “Work It” music video. The pair later sent the internet into a frenzy when they reunited on stage to perform the track at the 2019 Video Music Awards. So, where exactly was Stoner during Coachella?
“I think when I went out with Missy for the VMAs, that was a pretty big splash and hard to beat,” she explains in an interview at Entertainment Weekly‘s San Diego Comic-Con video suite for Phineas and Ferb. “But Missy stands on her own. She’s got quite a discography, and it’s an honor any time I get to visit with her, but I… yeah, I’m absolutely, mostly, just a fan with everyone else.”
More than two decades down the line, Stoner acknowledges that the music video is something people still talk to her about.
“I just took a dance class the other day and we were warming up to Missy tracks… and someone looked over and saw that I was in class and they were like, ‘Should I change it?'” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘No! Her music is so solid.’ So, yeah, good artistry is good artistry, you know?”
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Elliott didn’t introduce any surprise special guests during either of her Coachella weekend performances in April, instead choosing to perform a bevy of hits including “Gossip Folks,” “Work It,” and “Lose Control” accompanied by a group of backup dancers.
Robin L Marshall/Getty; Paras Griffin/Getty
Alyson Stoner and Missy Elliott
Stoner previously opened up about her “special” reunion with Elliott at the VMAs in an exclusive interview with EW.
“We were able to catch up,” she said at the time. “It was a lot of very sincere but quick small talk because we had to immediately prep the section, but I am a huge fan of her embrace — her hugs are so special. They feel heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul, and this time I wasn’t a foot-and-a-half shorter than her! I was eye-to-eye, and that was really surreal and special.”
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