Miley Cyrus knows she has somewhat tricky family dynamics, and she isn’t afraid to address them.
The “Flowers” singer is a product of her mom Tish Cyrus‘ marriage to Billy Ray Cyrus; the two were married from 1993 until 2022, and together also share Braison, 30, Noah, 24, plus Tish is also a mom to Brandi, 37, and Trace, 35.
For years the Grammy-winning singer has been reportedly distanced from her dad — and Hannah Montana co-star — and just as the “Butterfly Fly Away” singer announced his already tumultuous divorce from estranged wife Firerose, his daughter has given insight into what their relationship looks like today.
During an appearance on David Letterman’s Netflix show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Miley recalled — or tried — when she first moved to Los Angeles to film Hannah Montana.
“I have a terrible memory,” she noted, before joking: “Because I also inherited the narcissism from my father,” prompting laughter from David, as she added: “It’s true. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Later in the interview, David also asked whether “My father is my hero” was a sentiment Miley related to. Taking a sigh and a beat, she answered: “I mean honestly my mom is my hero.”
Continuing, with pause, she said: “My father… I’m grateful for his genes. My dad has great hair, and I got that, but he also, 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.
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Billy Ray broke out on the country scene in 1992, and is best known for his hit “Achy Breaky Heart” of the same year.
Miley continued: “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.”
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She also noted that she and her father hae “really different upbringings,” explaining: “The way that my dad was raised, he grew up very poor in a very small town. His parents were divorced when he was very young.”
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“My dad had a pretty rough childhood, and my childhood really… I mean we can go in and we can talk about the hard times or the struggles […] but I had food, I had love, I grew up in a beautiful big house and my dad didn’t have that.”
She concluded: “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.”
