Miley Cyrus Says She "Inherited Narcissism" From Dad Billy Ray Cyrus
She also explained why she's grateful for him.
Miley Cyrus shared some unfiltered thoughts on her family during a recent interview with David Letterman for his Netflix show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.
"I also inherited the narcissism from my father, that I don’t know anything about my own siblings," the singer told Letterman at one point, appearing to be half-joking.
When the host asked Miley if her dad was her hero, she considered her response carefully and said, "Honestly, my mom is my hero, and my father I'm grateful for—first, his genes. My dad has great hair, and I got that."
She went on to explain that Billy Ray Cyrus has always been a very grounded person, and added, "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" hitmaker explained that she's very different from her dad, by virtue of the extremely different upbringings they both had, with Billy Ray growing up around poverty and with divorced parents, while she had a very comfortable childhood.
"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," she said.
When Letterman asked Miley if she credited her mom Tish Cyrus and her dad Billy Ray each with 50% of her success today, she said, "They're different. They can't be weighed on the same scale, actually."
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Still, Miley stressed, "Without my dad … who I am as a person wouldn’t exist. Because my dad as a creative and, like, as an artist, and 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."
Miley and Billy Ray costarred on her Disney Channel show Hannah Montana between 2006 and 2011, and portrayed a father and daughter who were very close to each other.
In real life, though, it sounds like right now Miley is closer to her mom—whose wedding she attended last summer alongside siblings Trace and Brandi, but which her siblings Noah and Braison skipped out on.
There have been rumors of Cyrus family strife since then, whose flames Miley fanned when she appeared to snub her dad in her Grammys acceptance speech this past February.
Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of British Vogue, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29 and SELF. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.