Miley Cyrus Addresses Complicated Relationship With Dad Billy Ray Cyrus

Miley Cyrus is getting candid about her relationship with both of her parents, Billy Ray Cyrus and Tish Cyrus.

Amid recent rumors of estrangement from her father, the Grammy-winning singer was asked on a new episode of David Letterman’s Netflix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction if she would consider Billy Ray her hero.

“Honestly, my mom is my hero,” Miley responded before detailing why she’s also “grateful” for her dad, who rose to fame following his cover of “Achy Breaky Heart” in 1992. They later starred as a father-daughter duo on Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana from 2006 to 2011.

“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,” she said. “I’m grateful for being able to watch him ahead of me. He’s almost given me this map. And there’s a map of what to do and what not to do, and he’s guided me on both.”

The “Flowers” singer later explained to the host how each of her parents contributed to her success in “different” ways, noting that “they can’t be weighed on the same scale, actually.”

“Without my dad, I know — I mean, not just literally I wouldn’t be sitting in this chair, I wouldn’t exist — but I would not, who I am as a person, it wouldn’t exist. Because my dad, as a creative and as an artist in the way that his brain works, has always made me feel safer in my own mind because we’re very similar in our ideas,” Miley said. “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.”

The “Used To Be Young” artist’s latest remarks come amid a rumored family fallout that allegedly began after Tish filed for divorce from Billy Ray in April 2022. Since then, Tish tied the knot with Dominic Purcell in August 2023, and Billy Ray married Firerose in October 2023. However, the country singer reportedly filed for divorce from Firerose, whose real name is Johanna Rose Hodges, last month, citing irreconcilable differences and inappropriate marital conduct in court documents.

The Cyrus family rift rumors only heated up in February when Miley noticeably excluded her father from her Grammy acceptance speech for record of the year. “I don’t think I forgot anyone,” the singer said after expressing her appreciation for her mom and older sister, Brandi.

At one point, Letterman brought up the rumors, asking Miley directly, “There’s not estrangement here with your father, it’s just the way things are played?”

“Yeah,” the “Wrecking Ball” singer said. “I think, what is so beautiful is that my parents, they served their children, and I know this. My parents served us and sacrificed so much for us. Anything we dreamed of, they made possible.”

Miley also expanded on the current dynamic between her and her parents after being asked if it’s “unlikely that both parents would share an equal role going through your life [since] it’s always going to be one or the other is closer as things evolve?”

“It’s really just not the closeness,” she explained. “I think it’s the capacity in which my mom was raised by a completely intact, beautiful family. Actually, my mom was adopted so my mom was chosen. Her parents couldn’t have children so they wanted her more than anything in the world. So my mom came in to this world being wanted and being loved and being given the most beautiful life. My grandmother spoiled not only her but me completely rotten. My dad didn’t have that.”

Miley went on to detail the differences in Billy Ray’s childhood.

“The way my dad was raised, he grew up very poor in a very small town,” the “Party In The U.S.A.” singer continued. “His parents were divorced when he was very young. My dad had a pretty rough childhood and my childhood, really — I mean, we can go on and talk about the hard times and the struggles; you know, 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. So I have a lot of empathy and compassion for his childhood, which obviously developed to create the man he is now that I have a lot of love for.”