Miley Cyrus and Billy Ray Cyrus are back on better terms.
The singer opened up about her strained relationship with her father in a vulnerable sit-down with The New York Times “The Interview” podcast.
Interviewer Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked Cyrus if she was still estranged from her dad, to which she said “no.”
“I think timing is everything,” the 32-year-old said. “As I’ve gotten older, I’m respecting my parents as individuals instead of as parents — because my mom really loved my dad for her whole life, and I think being married to someone in the music industry and not being a part of it is obviously really hard.”
The “Flowers” singer said she thought she “took on some of my mom’s hurt as my own because it hurt her more than it hurt me as an adult, and so I owned a lot of her pain.”
Now that both of her parents are with other people, Cyrus said that she “can love them both as individuals instead of as a parental pairing.”
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“I’m being an adult about it,” she said. “At first it’s hard, because the little kid in you reacts before the adult in you can go, ‘Yes, that’s your dad, but that’s just another person that deserves to be in his bliss and to be happy.’ My child self has caught up.”
Speculation swirled that Cyrus and her “Achy Breaky Heart” father were on strained terms after her siblings appeared to take sides following their parents’ 2022 divorce.
Cyrus previously denied being estranged from her father in an interview with David Letterman last year, in which she spoke about Billy Ray’s “narcissism” and said she was mostly raised by her mother.
During the sit-down, Letterman said, “There’s not estrangement here with your father, it’s just, kinda, the way things are played?”
“Yeah,” Cyrus said at the time. “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.”
Despite Cyrus’ denial of a rift with her father, the singer seemed to purposefully leave her father out of her acceptance speech when she won her first Grammy in early 2024.
She thanked her mom, sister Brandi Cyrus and her boyfriend, Maxx Morando ― seemingly leaving out her other siblings and father on purpose as she shouted out: “…all the people that we love! I don’t think I’ve forgotten anyone.”
To add to the speculation, Miley Cyrus and two of her siblings attended their mom Tish’s wedding to “Prison Break” actor Dominic Purcell in 2023.
Notably absent were Cyrus’ two siblings ― Braison and Noah Cyrus, the latter of whom was photographed wearing a Billy Ray Cyrus shirt over Tish’s wedding weekend.
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