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.
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.)
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?
This article originally appeared in Teen Vogue.