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Miley Cyrus reflected on working with her dad, country star Billy Ray Cyrus, on Hannah Montana.
Miley, 33, scored her breakout role as the title character of the Disney sitcom in the early 2000s. She played a typical teenager living a double life as the famous pop star in the series that premiered on March 24, 2006. The Hannah Montana finale aired on January 16, 2011. Throughout the show, Miley worked with real-life dad Billy Ray, who played her onscreen father.
During an interview with Variety that published on Wednesday morning (March 18), Miley recalled the audition process for the now-iconic show. After Miley'd secured the role, her mom, Tish Cyrus, remembered a casting director jokingly said, “too bad we can’t afford her real dad,” when searching for an actor to play the part. Tish, who was married to Billy Ray from 1993 to 2022, saw an opportunity for the family to be together while filming in L.A., and spoke up. Miley told Variety, “my dad is too nice. He goes out into the parking lot, grabs other dads, brings them into Disney and is like, ‘You should hire this guy! He’s a great actor!’ And my mom was behind him, squeezing his back, saying, ‘Shut up! We need you to get the role so we can all move out here!’ My dad always says, ‘When you knock ’em out, you don’t need a judge.’ We knocked ’em out. It was so obvious, after all the other dads, that you can’t fake the kind of connection that we have. The inside jokes, the nicknames, the handshakes, singing the songs together. It was a TKO.”
“My parents didn’t need me to be famous to survive or to be stable,” Miley continued during her conversation with Variety. “What happens to a lot of these kids is their parents want it more than they do, or the kids become responsible for the entire income of the family. That was never my job. Every penny I ever made went into my bank account because my parents were good. …My dad was on set every single day, so there was nothing that could happen that he wouldn’t know about. There was never a time where I was going to be alone in that dressing room.”
Throughout her conversation with Variety, Miley reflected on her time on the show, teased the anniversary special, the “terrible habit” she picked up from godmother Dolly Parton, whether she’d headline a Super Bowl halftime show, how she’s “reclaiming” Hannah Montana 20 years later, and more. Find the full interview here. Billy Ray appears alongside his daughter in the highly-anticipated Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special, premiering on Disney+ on March 24.