Miley Cyrus Addresses Tumultuous Relationship With Father Billy Ray for the First Time (original) (raw)

If you've Googled Miley Cyrus's name in the past few months, you've probably been greeted with a couple of results: 1) Her collaboration (and friendship) with Beyoncé and 2) Her rumored family drama, which she's now addressing openly.

In a new appearance on David Letterman's Netflix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Miley Cyrus opened up about her seemingly tumultuous relationship with her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, who famously costarred with her on the Disney Channel series Hannah Montana, and their rumored estrangement for the first time.

One of Billy Ray Cyrus and Miley Cyrus's last public appearances together on The Voice in 2021.

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In case you need a refresher, speculation about Miley Cyrus and Billy Ray Cyrus not being on the best of terms first started spreading after she skipped his wedding to soon-to-be-ex-wife Firerose in October 2023. The rumors intensified when Miley Cyrus decided to not mention her father during her acceptance speech at the 2024 Grammy Awards, where the singer collected her very first Grammy ever for "Flowers" — the coveted Record of the Year, to be exact.

Tish Cyrus and Miley Cyrus together at the 2024 Grammys on February 4, 2024.

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Speaking to Letterman, Miley Cyrus was asked about the "estrangement" with her father directly, which she denied, instead agreeing with the host that "it's just the way things are played." The singer then took the chance to open up about her relationship with both her father and mother at length, thanking them for "serving their children" while she was growing up.

"My parents served us and sacrificed so much for us. Anything we dreamed of, they made possible," Cyrus told Letterman, going on to quip that she's most grateful for her father's genes — "My dad has great hair, and I got that," she joked — and claiming she "also inherited the narcissism" from him.

Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley Cyrus, and Tish Cyrus at the 2019 Grammys on February 10, 2019.

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After the jokes, the singer got candid, saying: "He has a relationship and a foot on the ground to the real and to nature, and he always did, even when he was super famous. I'm grateful for being able to watch him ahead of me. He's almost, like, given me this map, and there is a map of what to do and what not to do, and he's guided me on both."

The singer went on to praise her dad for his creativity, admitting it has actually inspired her as an artist. "The way that his brain works has always made me feel safer in my own mind because we're very similar in some of our ideas," she explained. "So I think a lot of his perspective on reality and on life, I've inherited from him, more so than the way that I was raised, which, really, my mom raised me." (Despite singing his praises, Cyrus also picked her mother over her father as the person she'd choose as her "hero" in the interview.)

Billy Ray Cyrus and Miley Cyrus in Memphis, Tennessee, on October 8, 1994.

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Cyrus also discussed her father's "rough childhood" sincerely, admitting the struggles she faced were nothing compared to his. "My childhood, really — I mean, we can go and talk about the hard times or the struggles, turning in my homework and learning my lines was tough — but I had food, I had love, I grew up in a beautiful big house, and my dad didn't have that," she said, "so I have a lot of empathy and compassion for his childhood, which obviously developed to create the man that he is now, that I have a lot of love for."

Billy Ray Cyrus seems to be reciprocating the love. On June 7, before news of his new divorce broke, he took to Instagram to share a throwback picture with Miley, writing: “I’m incredibly proud of her. She's a survivor and a true artist. She learned early on to love and appreciate the fans who make everything possible. We both cherish the connection we have with our fans and are grateful for every single one of you!”

Are these all signs of a reconciliation?