When Miley Cyrus auditioned for Hannah Montana at just 12-years-old no one had any idea the phenomenon it would turn into.
Four series, including spin off series Hannah Montana Forever, 98 episodes and Hannah Montana The Movie, The Best Of Both Worlds became a soundtrack to a generation of childhoods.
Marking the 20th anniversary of the show with a Disney+ special on Tuesday, it is fair to say a lot has happened in Miley’s life.
Speaking on the documentary the singer, now 33, paid tribute to her dedicated fan base as she explained the idea for the special was to honour how much they supported her in her transition from Hannah to Miley.
She confessed: ‘It wasn’t always easy. It was a bit of a turbulent transition at times and this just feels like not only a moment of reflection of the show itself but more just the longevity and the loyalty of everyone that I have grown up with.’
Growing up in the public eye is never easy, but emerging out of the squeaky clean Disney image, Miley’s evolution played out on the world stage.
Swinging naked on a wrecking ball in her 2013 single of the same name it was clear the star had done a whole U-turn on her Hannah days.
Miley Cyrus’ full circle moment as singer returns to Hannah Montana after a turbulent decade living out her rebellious teenage years, dealing with divorce, messy family feuds and plenty of twerking
Growing up in the public eye is never easy, but emerging out of the squeaky clean Disney image, Miley’s evolution played out on the world stage (pictured performing with Robin Thicke at the 2013 MTV VMA Awards)
Yet now, newly engaged, Miley has returned to her more wholesome roots, after years of experimenting with her image, drug taking, a public divorce and messy family feuds.
While this time last year her family appeared to be in tatters following her parents Tish and Billy Ray’s divorce, Miley confirmed in the special that she is now on great terms with her dad.
She told host Alex Cooper: ‘I know how much our relationship means to everyone that watched the show. I think when me and my dad are good people feel better.
‘It just feels good when the Cyrus’ are getting along.’
Turning up to her audition, a young girl with no acting experience who just wanted to make people laugh, the producers decided to take a risk when they cast Miley after 11 months of searching.
Former President of Disney Channels Worldwide Gary Marsh said: ‘I had this nutty ambition that we could turn a fictional popstar into a real life superstar.’
Recalling the email he sent to the team after deciding to cast Miley he wrote: ‘I am ready to pull the trigger on Miley. Is she a risk? Unquestionably. Is she a potential star? Absolutely.’
He added: ‘We decided to forsake the safe route for the riskier one and the greater award.’
After her dad bagged the role of her dad on the show, Robby Ray, her family quickly packed up their lives in Nashville Tennessee to move to the glam world of California.
‘I got here in a mini-skirt and flip flops and never looked back. I never got to LA and felt homesick,’ joked Miley.
The final episode of Hannah Montana aired January 2011 and following the release of several Hannah Montana albums, the star began forging her way as an artist under her own name.
Her 2010 album Can’t Be Tamed marked her first major departure from her squeaky clean Hannah image as she donned her leather and danced in a cage while singing ‘I can’t be tamed/ I can’t be blamed/ I can’t be changed/ I can’t be tamed’.
But it was her 2013 record Bangerz which really sent the world into a frenzy after she hired Larry Rudolph to be her manager, best known for previously representing Britney Spears.
Shaving off her brunette locks in favour of a blonde pixie cut, her first single We Can’t Stop featured lyrics referring to ‘Molly’ and ‘lines in the bathroom’, drunken partying and of course plenty of twerking.
In what became her signature move, she later made headlines after her controversial performance with Robin Thicke at the MTV VMA Awards in 2013.
Dressed in a barely there flesh coloured underwear ensemble, Miley shocked both the audience and those watching at home as she gyrated, bumped and grinded on Robin.
After her dad bagged the role of her dad on the show, Robby Ray, her family quickly packed up their lives in Nashville Tennessee to move to the glam world of California
Shaving off her brunette locks for a blonde pixie cut, her first single We Can’t Stop featured lyrics referring to ‘Molly’ and ‘lines in the bathroom’, drunken partying and plenty of twerking
Wrecking Ball saw the singer strip naked and swing on a bulldozer ball as it swung through the air. The video raked up a staggering 12.3million views in just 24 hours on Vevo
Miley has long been a proponent of smoking and legalizing marijuana, famously lighting a joint up on stage during her 2013 MTV EMAs performance in Amsterdam (pictured)
Speaking to the New York Times two years later in 2015 she said she was amazed that people found the performance so shocking.
She added: ‘I can’t believe that was a big deal. It wasn’t shocking at all.’
The singer said she was left feeling judged after what happened, by not only strangers but also her friends.
But the singer didn’t stop there. With her follow up ballad single Wrecking Ball seeing the singer strip naked and swing on a bulldozer ball as it swung through the air.
The video raked up a staggering 12.3million views in just 24 hours on Vevo to become its most viewed record.
At the time, then-20-year-old Miley defended the backlash as she urged people to focus on the raw emotion of the song, which was referencing her break-up with Liam Hemsworth.
She said: I think the video is much more, if people get past the point that I’m naked and you actually look at me. You can tell that I actually look more broken than even the song sounds.’
But in 2017, Miley admitted that she regretted making the video, saying: ‘I’m never living that down. I will always be the naked girl on a wrecking ball.
‘I just licked the sledgehammer. I should have thought how long that was going to follow me around. That’s my worst nightmare – that being played at my funeral.’
Miley has also openly discussed her drug use in her younger years, once joking that her Disney alter-ego Hannah Montana disappeared from the public eye because she had ‘a lot of drugs’.
The star has long been a proponent of smoking and legalizing marijuana, famously lighting a joint up on stage during her 2013 MTV EMAs performance in Amsterdam.
Appearing on Jimmy Fallon in 2017, Miley confirmed she had quit smoking after a recurring nightmare.
She explained: ‘I kept having this nightmare, I had a dream I would die during my monologue during SNL for some reason, that I would just get so stoned and I would just die.’
‘How much weed were you smoking?’ asked Jimmy.
‘A lot of weed. It’s like no one has ever died from weed but no one has ever smoked as much as I did,’ replied Miley.
In 2021, she told Rolling Stone: ‘[I] haven’t done drugs in years. Honestly, I never try to, again, be a fortune-teller. I try to not be naïve.
‘Things f***ing happen. But from sitting here with you right now, I would say it would have to be a cold day in hell for me to relapse on drugs.’
In Miley’s words, her marriage to Liam Hemsworth wasn’t as smooth-sailing as she hoped for, with the singer previously declared their relationship was ‘a f****** disaster’ (pictured 2018)
Tish split with Billy Ray back in 2022 after nearly 30 years of marriage, and last June Miley teased the whole family went through a, ‘really difficult, dark decade’ (Billy, Noah, Tish, Brandi and Miley L-R in 2017)
She previously said: ‘Actually, one of the reasons I got sober was I had just turned 26, and I said, “I got to pull my s*** together before I’m 27, because 27 is the time you cross over that threshold into living or dying a legend”‘ (pictured in 2020)
She went on: ‘Actually, one of the reasons I got sober was I had just turned 26, and I said, “I got to pull my s*** together before I’m 27, because 27 is the time you cross over that threshold into living or dying a legend”.’
Despite choosing a life of sobriety, Miley has insisted she doesn’t have a problem with drinking and instead just feels better in herself without it.
She told Zane Lowe: ‘I think everyone has to do what is best for them. I don’t have a problem with drinking. I have a problem with the decisions I make once I go past that level of… Even into, I’ve just been wanting to wake up 100 percent, 100 percent of the time.’
Following numerous Disney star romances with Dylan Sprouse and Nick Jonas, Miley went on to have a long term relationship, and eventually marrying, Liam Hemsworth.
The on-again-off-again couple first began dating in 2010 after meeting on the set of The Last Song and got engaged for the first time in May 2012.
However, they then split up in September 2013 before reuniting in 2016.
They went on to tie the knot in December 2018 before splitting for good just eight months later and finalising their divorce in January 2020.
Miley previously branded her marriage to Liam ‘a f****** disaster’ as she helped a couple get engaged during her set at Lollapalooza Brazil in 2022.
Miley had previously admitted she had ‘too much conflict’ in her marriage, claiming: ‘There was too much conflict….When I come home, I want to be anchored by someone. ‘I don’t get off on drama or fighting.’
The star admitted she didn’t know if she and the actor would have gone through with tying the knot if it hadn’t been for the devastation of her home in Malibu being destroyed in a fire in 2018.
‘We were together since 16. Our house burned down. We had been like, engaged. I don’t know if we really ever thought we were actually going to get married, but when we lost our house in Malibu, which if you listen to my voice pre- and post-fire, they’re very different so that trauma really affected my voice.’
Her 2019 single Slide Away appeared to address their split as she sang: ‘You go back to the ocean, I’ll go back to the city life’ after she famously moved her life to Malibu with Liam – hence her hit song Malibu on her 2017 album Younger Now.
Following the end of her marriage, the star went on to release Plastic Hearts in 2020 which included her hit with Stevie Nicks Midnight Sky.
After a career spanning 17 years, it wasn’t until 2024 that the star won her first Grammy for her hit single Flowers – the diss track written about Liam.
She was also honoured at the Disney Legends Awards Ceremony later that year, becoming the youngest honoree to receive the title.
‘People have 50- or 60-year-long careers, but mine has been close to 20 years, and I’m 31,’ the Malibu artist shared. ‘I have been in the public for more of my life than I haven’t. They say that the creative adult is the child who survived. I worked really hard as a child.’
And while her relationship with her dad was always so strong on the show, in her adult life the Cyrus family have had a rocky road.
Tish split with Billy Ray back in 2022 after nearly 30 years of marriage, and last June Miley teased the whole family went through a, ‘really difficult, dark decade’ but were able to get through it and mend their fences without therapy.
‘We’re so messy, we didn’t even do any of that,’ Miley joked of her family struggles, revealing the reason a therapist wasn’t involved.
‘Just to get each other into a room to get to counseling would have been a war,’ she admitted.
She told that at one point of the ‘dark decade,’ half of her family members were not speaking to each other.
Before her parents’ official split and divorce, Miley said that her parents were on-and-off, as she revealed how that affected her.
‘(I) watched what happens when you don’t clean things up as they’re happening,’ Miley admitted.
‘They really do stack. And then all of the sudden you go, “Oh my God, it’s been 10 years and this is a mess I barely even know how to start. This is emotional hoarding,”‘ she admitted.
As the rumour mill swirled last May, after Miley reunited with her father and his new girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley, the star took to Instagram to hit back at any animosity between her and her mum.
‘I rarely comment on rumors, but my mama and I are too tight for anything to ever come between us,’ Miley wrote in a statement on her Instagram Story.
‘She’s my best friend. Like a lot of moms, she doesn’t know how to work her phone and somehow unfollowed me — simple, coincidental and uninteresting.’
Miley also addressed her relationship with Billy Ray acknowledging their rocky past but insisting they’re in a better place now.
‘My dad and I have had our challenges over the years,’ she continued. ‘Now, in my 30s, family is my priority above all else. I’m at peace knowing bridges have been built and time has done a lot of healing.’
She ended her post on a hopeful note, writing: ‘Grateful for the good health and love that flows through my family.’
In a June episode of Monica Lewinsky’s Reclaiming podcast, Miley revealed exactly why she wrote her new song Secrets.
‘I wrote this song about my dad because I wanted him to tell me even though there were secrets, even though I didn’t really want to know,’ she explained.
She added, ‘I wanted to be the one he felt safe enough to tell me the things that were damning and damaging to the family.
It was revealed in December that Miley is now engaged to her partner of four years Maxx Morando (pictured at the Hannah Anniversary premiere on Monday)
After turbulent family relationships, wild partying and a messy divorce it seems Miley has done a full circle moment as she returned to her life as Hannah for the Disney+ special
‘I wanted him to think that as a middle child, I’m old enough that I could take some of that.’
After turbulent family relationships, wild partying and a messy divorce it seems Miley has done a full circle moment as she returned to her life as Hannah for the Disney+ special.
This time the blonde hair isn’t even a wig, but her own locks and bangs (with a few added clip ins) and it appears Miley has never been happier to merge the two identities into one.
Speaking on the show she said: ‘Now what I love is that I used to think of Hannah as something separate of myself, as a character…. and I didn’t always think about it as if we were integrated.
‘What I am loving about this special is it is kind of my reclaiming of merging of Hannah and Miley together.
‘I like some of what Hannah’s got going but I like a lot of Miley so I want to put them together’.
Embarking on a new chapter, it was revealed in December that Miley is now engaged to her partner of four years Maxx Morando.
While Miley didn’t share any details about how Maxx proposed, she did reveal why she’s been been left ‘astounded’ by the engagement.
‘The detail that I can share is that for us, our privacy and us kind of keeping it small has been something that I’ve been astounded that I’ve actually been able to have and being able to kind of have more choice,’ she revealed.
And speaking in the special she revealed she is ready for the next chapter of her life as she suggested she is now going to settle down as she takes the next steps into her womanhood.
‘I’ve been extremely blessed to have so much love within my family and now finding love in a different way. Finding love to where I feel like I am taking the next steps into my womanhood of creating a life with someone.
‘I mean everybody has a fantasy of wanting to feel loved, and I have always found it from these different places.
‘But to experience it now and imagine what the next 20 years might look like is so different then it did on a TV show but so much of it will hopefully be the same.
‘The joke, the wisdom, the quality time in the kitchen, the ending the day by sitting on the couch and writing the song but the only difference is that it will be mine.
‘It will be just for me and it won’t be broadcast across the world.’
