Miley Cyrus opened up about her complex relationship with her parents, Billy Ray Cyrus and Tish Cyrus, in a candid conversation on David Letterman's Netflix show, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.
When asked if she considers her father a hero, the singer addressed recent rumours of a rift between them, offering a nuanced perspective on their relationship.
Miley answered, "To be honest, my mom is my hero," and went on to say that she is "grateful" for her father, who gained notoriety in 1992 for his rendition of Achy Breaky Heart.
Later, from 2006 to 2011, they portrayed a father-daughter team on Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel.
“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 crooner subsequently told the presenter how her parents have had "different" but significant contributions to her achievement, adding 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,” she 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.”
Cyrus' recent comments come amidst a reported family feud, which allegedly started after her mother, Tish Cyrus, filed for divorce from her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, in April 2022.