Miley Cyrus has made a subtle dig at her father, Billy Ray, amid his recent filing for divorce from his wife of seven months, Firerose.
On David Letterman’s Netflix special, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, the “Flowers” singer welcomed the host to Chateau Marmont for a private concert in his honor alongside her mom, Tish. Cyrus sang and chatted with Letterman, speaking about her illustrious career, Hannah Montana, and her family dynamics in episode two of season five.
Cyrus also candidly answered Letterman’s question of whether she’d consider her dad to be her hero. “I mean, honestly, my mom is my hero,” she confessed, before noting how much she still cares for Billy Ray. Though the Grammy winner believed to have inherited her dad’s “perspective and reality on life,” she thinks her mom impacted her more. Cyrus went as far as saying Tish was the one who truly raised her. What’s more, Cyrus said she inherited her dad’s narcissism, too.
“Um, so I think a lot of, like, 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,” she told Letterman.
Still, the “Wrecking Ball” performer said her parents have separately impacted her career and helped to catalyze her success. But the parts they individually played “can’t be weighed on the same scale,” according to her.
The former Disney Channel star has seen Billy Ray, Tish, and her siblings – Noah, Brandi, Christopher, Trace, and Braison – in the news a lot recently. After 29 years of marriage, Billy Ray and Tish called it quits in 2022. That same year, the “Achy Breaky Heart” artist got engaged to Firerose. Meanwhile, Tish accepted a proposal from Dominic Purcell a year later.
When Cyrus and a few of her other siblings weren’t present for her dad’s recent nuptials, family riff rumors spurred, especially since the “Used To Be Young” vocalist was the maid of honor at her mom’s ceremony to Purcell.
Having dealt with her family woes for a while, Cyrus has developed intuitive answers for their dynamic. She noted how Tish was adopted by a couple who desperately “spoiled” her because of how badly they wanted a baby. On the other hand, her father’s upbringing was drastically different. Cyrus admitted Billy Ray’s childhood was “really rough.”
“My childhood – I mean we can go and 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 told Letterman.
“Without my dad, who I am as a person wouldn’t exist because my dad as a creative, and like, as an artist, and the way his brain works has always made me feel safer in my mind,” Cyrus continued. “He also has a relationship and a foot on the ground to nature and to the real. 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 – there is a map of what to do and what not to do – and he’s guided me on both.”
Now, Billy Ray finds himself in new territory, attempting to annul his marriage that lasted less than a year. On June 11, TMZ reported that Billy Ray wanted the court to grant him an outright annulment and claimed the marriage was based on fraud. The court documents obtained by the outlet cited May 22 as his and Firerose’s official date of separation.
The Independent has contacted representatives for Billy Ray and Firerose for comment.
