The Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Interview

On a stupidly sizzling Friday in February, 215 fortunate followers line up at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood to witness the resurrection of a pop icon.  

There are girls carrying headset microphones, males in orange bob wigs, glittery scarves draped over color-clashing sequined attire, classic tour tees, yellow zebra print tights, tiny purses clinging to furry turquoise denim jackets, belts layered on belts layered on belts and a pink fingerless glove. One lady has flown from Texas to witness this mysterious occasion — one other has traveled from São Paulo.  

Soon, this horde of over-accessorized millennial cuspers is ushered right into a soundstage, their telephones locked in pouches. On one aspect: a pretend seaside and the bed room closet of a teen lady’s goals. On the opposite: an empty stage spangled with twinkling lights. An hour goes by, after which, by means of a slit within the curtains, Miley Cyrus flashes a smile and ideas her oversize black sun shades. She steps onstage in a glowing floor-length black gown and greets the screaming followers.  

“Welcome to the Hannahversary,” she says, sweeping apart her blond bangs as she launches into “This Is the Life,” the country-tinged music that launched the world to “Hannah Montana” precisely 20 years in the past. Then, lifting up her mic stand underneath the glow of a highlight, Cyrus belts the facility ballad “The Climb.”  

“You’re about to be so gagged for what’s to come,” says Cyrus earlier than disappearing behind the scenes for an outfit change. She could also be talking concerning the subsequent quantity — “The Best of Both Worlds” — or the broader celebration: This live performance is being filmed as a part of an hourlong “Hannah Montana” anniversary particular airing on Disney+ on March 24.  

Aside from Cyrus’ voice — now thicker and raspier — the tunes sound precisely, gloriously, the identical.  

“I didn’t want to do this modern approach to Hannah,” Cyrus says just a few days later at a homey, largely empty café in Silver Lake. “I wanted to keep it preserved. But also, now Hannah wears Gucci,” she says, drawing out the phrase like “Gew-chee.” “She’s elevated. She’s gotta look a little less Galleria,” Cyrus provides, referencing the Glendale mall the place she used to purchase a few of Hannah’s bedazzled tank tops and thin denims.  

But “Hannah Montana” was about way more than the style; it was a multimedia phenomenon that turned Cyrus into some of the well-known baby stars in historical past. From 2006 to 2011, the sequence, about an adolescent named Miley Stewart who lives a double life as a pop singer, was the crown jewel of the Disney Channel empire on the peak of its stronghold over American youth. (Its legacy endures: More than half a billion hours of the present have been streamed this decade on Disney+.) The Season 1 album was the primary TV soundtrack to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and Cyrus’ 2007 “Best of Both Worlds” tour bought out 71 arenas throughout North America. The accompanying documentary was the highest-grossing live performance movie ever upon its launch. “There were times where Hannah Montana felt like the Beatles or something,” Cyrus says. (Indeed, an total part of the doc is devoted to ladies shrieking on the high of their lungs.)   

I confirmed up early to this Eastside café and advised the hostess I used to be assembly somebody excessive profile, and will we please have a desk tucked away within the again? She didn’t care — that is L.A.; everybody thinks they’re well-known — and after awhile, I anxious the idle staffers thought I’d been stood up by a date. But when Cyrus arrived, a hushed curiosity washed over the place: She’s a actual star, a uncommon star that shifts the gravitational heart of any room she inhabits.  

Her hair is organized into tousled, gilded bangs, and she’s carrying tinted glasses and a white T-shirt that showcases the collage of scattered tattoos crawling up her arms. Her presence is heat and calm. Double-fisting an oat-milk latte and a chamomile tea, she appears to be like just like the grown-up model of the world’s most well-known fictional pop star, reemerging after a 15-year hiatus. She’s right here, partially, to speak concerning the particular, and he or she sums it up with these phrases: “It felt like home again.”  

After “Hannah Montana” ended, Cyrus solid her personal profession, changing into the chart-topping, chameleonic singer-songwriter behind “Wrecking Ball,” “Party in the U.S.A.” and the Grammy-winning “Flowers.” At 33, she’s some of the achieved and, for a very long time, scrutinized artists of her technology. (More on that later.) Cyrus as soon as shed her Disney-clean picture, however she has now returned to her golden-blond roots to “reclaim” Hannah Montana.  

“A lot of artists feel like to become the next version of themselves, they have to leave something behind,” Cyrus says. “But I’d rather be more like a gorgeous patchwork blanket. I’d rather take every little piece of all the things that I’ve been and create a mosaic of exactly who I am now — not trashing any of that past but allowing it to come with me.” She hopes the particular conjures up folks to “not take everything so seriously.”  

Last yr, Cyrus began teasing plans for the 20th anniversary of “Hannah Montana,” hinting in interviews and on purple carpets that she had one thing “special” up her sleeve. At the time, she was mendacity. Or let’s say manifesting?  

“I learned this terrible habit — but I actually think it was good advice — from Dolly,” she says, referring to the nation legend she calls her godmother. “She told me that if you want something to happen, promote it before it exists. Then no one can say no. So I just started promoting a ‘Hannah Montana’ 20th-anniversary special that literally did not exist.”  

“I think even Disney sometimes forgets the connection between me and Hannah,” she provides. “It’s not just a TV show. I see daily how important Hannah is to people. When I travel, people bring me ‘Hannah’ merch. They ask, ‘Are you ever going to do another season?’”  

So Cyrus planted the seeds final summer season, sat again and watched the hype develop. She started sending fan reactions to Disney, saying, “I’m telling you, this would be huge.”  

“She willed it into existence,” says Disney exec Charlie Andrews, who helps foster new fandoms for outdated Disney Channel exhibits. The firm began planning in December, and it’s been a “mad dash” since January executing Cyrus’ imaginative and prescient. “The thing she was adamant about is that this is for the fans. That has gone into literally every decision she has made.”  

Cyrus first recruited “Call Her Daddy” host Alex Cooper, a self-professed “Hannah Montana” superfan, to interview her within the particular. “She understands Hannah in a way that I couldn’t,” Cyrus says. “I never got to experience Hannah being crazy in the pit with other kids.”  

With that in thoughts, Cooper helped design the occasion round what followers truly care about, even capturing down a few of Cyrus’ concepts. “She would go, ‘As a Hannah fan, no one wants that,’” Cyrus says.  

Guided by that fandom, they made positive to include the little issues that will make viewers nostalgic: the hair flips, the Disney Channel wand commercials and, in fact, the “Ooh-whoa-ooh-whoa-ooh-ooh-whoa” transition music. Cyrus’ mother, Tish, introduced out dozens of outfits, fan letters and scrapbooks from the archives, and Disney re-created the units of the Stewart home. One factor Cyrus didn’t need to replicate was Hannah’s wig, so she dyed her hair and styled it with bangs as a substitute.  

Cooper additionally organized for a cameo from fellow Disney child and “Hannah Montana” visitor star Selena Gomez, who shocked Cyrus on set. “I love Selena, but I didn’t know how much our friendship meant to the fans,” Cyrus says.  

It was Cooper’s concept, too, to open the particular on an emotional second, with Cyrus driving from Malibu to the soundstage. “I didn’t think about the correlation between Hannah’s house in Malibu and my house in Malibu,” Cyrus says, “and my house burning down and me rebuilding.”  

Then got here the performances. Cyrus hadn’t sung “Best of Both Worlds” since 2008, nevertheless it solely took three passes of rehearsal to snap proper again into it. “It was literally a bike. The dancers were doing stuff, and I’m like, ‘That’s not original!’” she says with a waggy finger, dialing up her Southern staccato. “And they’re like, ‘Well, we’re trying to make it modern.’ I’m like, ‘It ain’t broke — don’t fix it!’” Still, she is going to freshen issues up by performing a brand new, authentic music within the particular too. 

It was essential to Cyrus to protect the spirit of Hannah’s music. She could also be belting the identical Disney theme music she sang at 13, however there’s not a touch of camp or snark. “We did not want irony. This is not a joke,” she says. “I didn’t want this to be a viral moment. My point of doing this was not to break the internet.” Her level, Cyrus says, was to make the followers “feel seen.” “My entire life is because of that loyalty.”  

At the taping, the studio viewers is advised to chant “Hannah … Hannah …” earlier than Cyrus returns to carry out “Best of Both Worlds.” But earlier than Cyrus reappears, the mantra adjustments to “Miley.” “That was really emotional for me,” she says later. “I think they felt like, ‘We want to make sure Miley feels like we’re equally celebrating her 20th.’ It’s not just about the show itself. It’s about the entire evolution of myself growing.”  

“I love the present, and I love the future. But the past is not somewhere I love to live too much,” Cyrus says, squeezing honey from a plastic tube into her tea.  

So again to that scrutiny: In 2008, whereas she was filming the “Hannah Montana” film, a 15-year-old Cyrus was snapped on the duvet of Vanity Fair carrying nothing however a bedsheet. The backlash to the risqué picture was so intense that Cyrus issued an apology, which landed on the entrance web page of The New York Post with the headline “MILEY’S SHAME.”  

“I remember sitting at the family computer looking at what people were saying about me,” Cyrus says. “I wasn’t sorry so much as I was embarrassed by the reaction, and it felt like it would put out a lot of fires for me to be apologetic.” In hindsight, Cyrus says, “I don’t think it was apology-worthy, because I didn’t do anything wrong.”  

In the years following, Cyrus made extra headlines for innocent teenage antics. At 18, she misplaced a multimillion-dollar Walmart deal as a consequence of a leaked video of her smoking a bong. And a yr later, she was fired from a lead position in “Hotel Transylvania” due to a leaked picture of her posing with a penis-shaped birthday cake. These scandals stung on the time, however wanting again, Cyrus wouldn’t have modified a factor. “Regret is so in the past and pointless,” she says.  

If Disney generally forgets the connection between Cyrus and Hannah, it’s maybe as a result of, for a very long time, it appeared like Cyrus wished to overlook it too. In 2013, a yr after the present ended, a 20-year-old Cyrus launched what was seen as a rebellious rebrand. She swapped the Hannah wig for a bleached-blond, slicked-back pixie minimize. She frolicked with rappers and smoked a variety of weed. She caught out her tongue a lot it prompted suppose items in The Atlantic and The Guardian. And she incinerated the stays of her Disney Channel picture in an notorious efficiency on the VMAs during which she twerked on Robin Thicke.  

A pair months later, she hosted “Saturday Night Live” and declared, jokingly, that Hannah Montana had been “murdered.” Celebrating the present’s tenth anniversary in 2016, Cyrus wrote on Instagram, “Even though HM is chopped up into little tiny pieces and buried in my backyard, she will always hold a very special place in my heart!”  

 But on this anniversary, Hannah Montana may be very a lot alive. Contrary to standard perception — and to a few of her previous feedback — Cyrus says, “I wasn’t trying to kill Hannah off. I was just progressing.”  

“Being recognizable as a teen going through different phases and stages was sometimes awkward,” she continues, “but that’s what helped me relate to the kids watching at home.” 

Cyrus notes that reinventing herself was a danger, when she may have starred in additional “Hannah Montana” motion pictures and different Disney tasks. 

“I boldly and unapologetically presented myself to the world at that time, where I could have gone the other way and played it safe,” she says. “Maybe that would have been successful at the time, and it wouldn’t have been such a cross to bear, but I wouldn’t have had the reward. I don’t know if I would have had the sustainability that my career has now.”  

Throughout all of Cyrus’ completely different eras, one fixed in her life is the assist of her mom. “When you’re a kid, your parents don’t want to buy you a jacket that’s your actual size because you’re still growing; they buy you a size up so it can last longer,” she says. “That’s what my mom did for me in my career.”  

 Tish even immortalized their mother-daughter journey in ink. “My mom literally has ‘The Climb’ lyrics tattooed down her back,” Cyrus says. “Like a full chorus and a bridge.” She laughs. “People always ask her, ‘What were you thinking when Miley was doing those wild things?’ She’s like, ‘I was the one telling her to do it!’” 

Cyrus was born in 1992, the yr her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, had the No. 1 nation music in America. Her identify was Destiny Hope Cyrus, however her sunny disposition earned her the household nickname “Smiley,” later shortened to Miley. The household lived in Tennessee, and Tish would drive Cyrus throughout state strains for auditions. By the time she was 12, Cyrus had only some credit to her identify: three episodes of the medical drama “Doc” alongside her father, a minor half in Tim Burton’s “Big Fish” and a business for rooster pot pie.  

When Disney began to solid a brand new sitcom a couple of center schooler secretly moonlighting as a pop star, Cyrus initially auditioned for the sidekick position, Lilly, who was finally performed by Emily Osment. The community then requested Cyrus to tape herself as the principle character — a lady named Chloe.  

But Disney went in a special course, deciding Cyrus was too small and younger. So she went again to cheerleading at her center college within the Nashville suburbs, and Disney shot a pilot with a special solid.  

A yr later, the Cyruses’ telephone rang; it was the producers. “Hannah Montana” simply wasn’t working, they usually wished Cyrus to fly to Los Angeles to audition once more — this time in individual. Cyrus remembers going to the mall in Tennessee to select an outfit for the audition. She noticed her destiny hanging on a clothes rack: a blue-and-white T-shirt that learn, “I Should Have My Own TV Show.”  

She booked the half, after which it got here time to pick Hannah’s dad. As Tish remembers it, a Disney casting director, captivated with Billy Ray, joked, “Too bad we can’t afford her real dad,” and Tish mentioned, “Oh, maybe you can.” She satisfied her then-husband to fly to California to audition. Billy Ray had been capturing “Doc” in Toronto, splitting time between Canada and Tennessee. Tish considered “Hannah Montana” as a chance to reunite their household.  

“But my dad is too nice,” Cyrus says. She recounts a narrative that has turn out to be household lore: “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,” remembers Cyrus. “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.”  

The relaxation is historical past: Billy Ray starred in 99 episodes of the sequence as a retired nation singer who manages and writes songs for his pop-star daughter.  

The previous few years have seen a reckoning in youngsters’s tv, boosted by a 2024 docuseries centered on the alleged abuse throughout producer Dan Schneider’s tenure at Nickelodeon. Cyrus believes having Billy Ray on set helped defend her from the darkish aspect of kid stardom.   

“My parents didn’t need me to be famous to survive or to be stable,” she says. “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.”  

Throughout “Hannah Montana’s” five-year run, Cyrus’ dressing room was related to her dad’s, and between them was a kitchen-turned-office the place her grandmother Loretta “Mammie” Finley managed her fan membership. “My dad was on set every single day, so there was nothing that could happen that he wouldn’t know about,” Cyrus says. “There was never a time where I was going to be alone in that dressing room.”  

As her mother and father’ marriage hit the skids towards the tip of “Hannah Montana,” Cyrus’ relationship together with her dad started to fracture. Their estrangement performed out publicly by means of Billy Ray and Tish’s drawn-out divorce, which was finalized in 2022. The two didn’t communicate for years. Then, in 2025, Cyrus wrote a music for him known as “Secrets,” a peace providing that includes Lindsey Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood, as a result of Fleetwood Mac is her dad’s favourite band. In the music, Cyrus sings, “Call off all your forces / A white flag in the war.”

Billy Ray cried when he heard it, writing on Instagram: “One great song can do more for the soul than a million therapy sessions.”  

The two reunite on the “Hannah Montana” particular, hip bumping in a duplicate of the Stewart household front room.  

During the pandemic, when she was in her mid-twenties, Cyrus decided that modified her life. She acquired sober.  

“It’s no surprise that I had my experiences with drugs and alcohol,” she says, reflecting on the vertigo of childhood fame. “I was so used to living at a high, and I don’t think I ever learned how to come down from that. Now, through a sober lens, I can have compassion and understanding for myself.”  

In addition to conventional remedy, she additionally tried EMDR, a sort of psychotherapy primarily based on guided eye motion. She credit the method with serving to her confront the supply of her nervousness — and curing her stage fright. “You didn’t see any nerves, right?” she asks concerning the “Hannah Montana” live performance taping. “In the past, that would have taken over my entire body. I would have been frozen.”  

This doesn’t imply Cyrus plans to tour once more. She swore off arenas after 2014’s “Bangerz” tour and has since largely carried out at choose festivals and stay TV occasions, in addition to her intimate personal concert events at L.A.’s Chateau Marmont. “I actually miss and love live shows,” Cyrus says. “But me being on the road for six months out of the year and leaving my family and my normalcy and my routine is just not best for me.”  

Cyrus is presently the betting favourite to headline subsequent yr’s Super Bowl. Would she settle for a suggestion to carry out? 

“I always think the Super Bowl feels like too much pressure,” she says. “I would have to do the mental work of making it not about the Super Bowl, because then you can’t help but go, ‘It’s millions of people, and it’s the most-watched thing in the world.’”  

“But if I could find a way to make it exactly what the Hannahversary was — taking a journey through the discography and appreciating each song, each era for what it is — I think I could find it in myself.”  

Cyrus is equally open-ended about performing. Her final actual display screen position was in a 2019 “Black Mirror” episode during which she performs, naturally, a pop icon. She says she’s “very interested” in returning to performing: “I just haven’t found the right role for me.” She has even began to jot down down a few her personal concepts. “I’d want a character that felt like an extension of me. Or something completely different from who I am.”  

If the long run appears unscripted, it’s as a result of Cyrus prefers it that manner. “I love changing,” she says. “Anything I say could be out the window tomorrow.”  

At the identical time, she has lastly reached some extent the place all the pieces feels aligned. “My life is so beautiful. It never feels like I’m swimming upstream anymore,” she says. Last yr, she acquired engaged to her longtime boyfriend, the musician Maxx Morando. “I like the way people see me. And when I first left ‘Hannah’ and put out ‘Bangerz,’ I did not feel that way.”  

Back then, it appeared like Cyrus was burdened by the load of the Magic Kingdom. In the years since, she thinks the general public’s expectations of kid stars have modified. And whereas Cyrus stays off social platforms, she believes the media is much less merciless now than it was through the tabloid increase. “We’re much more tolerant and celebratory of people’s individuality than we were 10 years ago,” she says. “I would like to think that I’ve championed some of that.”  

As she’s grown up, Cyrus has been fortunate to depend on music legends like Parton, Joan Jett and Stevie Nicks as mentors. And she hopes to at some point tackle an analogous position for youthful artists following in her footsteps. When Chappell Roan opened up about her challenges with fan harassment, Cyrus was among the many first celebrities to succeed in out to her.  

“I never bow down to bullies. Anytime I feel like somebody is being bullied, I feel very protective of them,” Cyrus says. “When I see people struggling, I’m always the first one to ask, ‘Can I get in contact with them?’ I’d like to show artists how they can have a balanced life.”   

Back on the soundstage, because the band resets between songs, Cyrus gazes on the followers with the headsets and the wigs, struck, maybe, by the truth that they’re not little children anymore.  

“I used to think of Hannah as something separate from myself,” Cyrus says into the gold-studded microphone. She considered Hannah as a fantasy — a wig she placed on to play fake. But not too long ago she had an epiphany. “This special,” Cyrus says, “is my reclaiming of merging Hannah and Miley together.”  

She continues this thought on the café, explaining how residing a double life on TV taught her to compartmentalize the completely different facets of her identification: If Miley Stewart represented the sacredness of normalcy and Hannah Montana symbolized magic and chance, then for a few years, Miley Cyrus — the true lady — stood for freedom and authenticity. But she was additionally a defend.  

“I think I created a Miley Cyrus persona to protect myself,” she says, “so I could have the Miley behind closed doors. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve been able to integrate what I love about all of them into one being.”  

At the tip of “Hannah Montana,” after revealing her true identification, Miley Stewart turns down a significant film position and as a substitute decides to attend faculty with Lilly. She chooses normalcy over the lifetime of a celebrity. But for Cyrus, it’s not that binary.  

“I get so much of every single thing I want,” she says. “My relationship is private, my business is successful and I get to have the small things people take for granted, like waking up in my own bed and feeding my dogs.” 

Cyrus leans ahead, her eyes widening behind these tinted lenses. “But then I also get to be Hannah again and have people sobbing because they just saw ‘This Is the Life’ live. I love that I’ve curated my life that way.”  

It’s not the most effective of each worlds, however one thing complete. It took 20 years to develop, however that is Cyrus’ new theme music: “I can actually have it all.” 

Production: Alexey Galetskiy; Location: AGP West; Production design: Milena Gorum; Styling: Bradley Kenneth/A Frame Agency; Makeup: Janice Daoud/The Wall Group; Hair: Bobby Eliot/The Wall Group; Manicure: Miho Okawara; Look 1 (Cover and opening unfold): Full look: Maison Margiela; Look 2 (Blue high): Full look: Paco Rabanne Archive; Look 3 (Hat): Full look: Valentino; Look 4 (Gold): Full look: Roberto Cavalli