Cheer's Gabi insists there's no bad blood with director over parent backlash

Cheer’s Gabi Butler has insisted there’s no bad blood with the Netflix director after her parents received backlash from viewers.

Throughout the series, the 22-year-old’s mum and dad caused controversy and seemingly came across as controlling when they relayed her hectic schedule, right down to what pictures she should be posting on social media.

This recently caused the director Greg Whiteley to say on KCRW’s The Business that he owed the family an apology for how he portrayed them throughout the six-part documentary.

However, it appears there are no hard feelings, as Gabi recently told Metro.co.uk that he did an ‘amazing job producing the show’.

‘We love Greg,’ she said. ‘He felt very bad about the way people were coming at my parents, so he wanted to kind of make it right.

‘But yeah, he’s an amazing guy. Definitely. A great, great guy. Amazing producer. Super sweet.’

The star went onto explain how she never saw anything wrong with the show, adding: ‘I think that you’re never gonna get a complete great reaction to everything. And I guess a lot of people don’t have parents like mine.

‘A lot of people were like, “her parents are overstepping yada, yada, yada,” but, you know, I never really saw anything wrong with the way that they were. I think people nowadays read deeply into things.’

One scene that stuck out to fans was a phonecall between Gabi and her mum, Debbie, who told her daughter to eat jackfruit instead of eggs so that she wasn’t consuming as much.

Addressing the scene, the cheerlebrity told us that she’d asked her mum for advice on toning up before the conversation took place, however, this didn’t make the final cut.

‘I didn’t know they were recording,’ she confessed. ‘But we’re just a very, very straightforward family.

‘[Viewers] didn’t really see the conversation that was leading up to that. And it’s actually funny because everyone is like “Oh, the jackfruit situation.”‘

She went on: ‘I was actually talking to my mom about it before and I was trying to ask her some stuff to tone up. Not that I was I thought I was ever big, but I wanted to tone up.

‘So my mom was giving me some suggestions. But yeah, I think that people of course, they overreact and make it into this huge thing.’

That clears that up then.

Gabi was chatting ahead of her virtual senior night, where she teamed up with Playtext Sport to join those who were unable to make their end of year celebrations because of the coronavirus crisis.

‘We look forward to the very end to celebrate,’ she said. ‘And I feel like all the athletes this year got cheated because of this virus, myself too having to work so hard for something and then at the last second, you’re like, “Oh, God, like we can’t do this. ”

‘We know it’s this big event and I feel like that’s what we look forward to – celebrating the end. So we’re going to celebrate them even though it’s virtual, and give them the night that they didn’t get.’

Cheer is available to stream now on Netflix.

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