Miley Cyrus gave her first extensive interview in a year to W, following her last piece with British Vogue in May 2023. The singer has kept a low profile for much of 2024, something she does on purpose now to protect her private life.
“There’s a level of my life that’s super intimate, sacred, and secret,” she told the magazine, comparing her public persona to a drag performance. “Sometimes I forget to talk about things that are a normal part of my day-to-day, like texting with Beyoncé. I think it’s a really cute part of our relationship, because over the past couple of years I’ve really locked down on my privacy and on what I share with the public. She’s the same way. Part of our relationship is the safety between us.”
Still, Cyrus revealed quite a bit to the outlet about her friendship with the megastar, her thoughts on becoming a parent someday, and how she views her Disney child stardom now as an adult.
“It was a great, safe experience overall,” she said of her time on the Disney Channel, starring on Hannah Montana. “People have 50- or 60-year-long careers, but mine has been close to 20 years, and I’m 31. 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. I didn’t go to prom. I didn’t go to dances. I didn’t have so much of that social experience or time for friends. Disney, they were doing very well off of the amount of work that I was putting in as a child. I don’t have any bad feelings about that. It’s just the truth.”
She added that she doesn’t think she’s competing against anyone in the industry, despite some comparing her to other musicians or her Disney Channel peers. “Competition is really of no interest to me,” she said. “I don’t think of other artists as opponents. Artists are not the same as athletes, playing a zero-sum game and keeping a score. There isn’t a score in art.”
She declined to talk about her partner, Maxx Morando, but she did share that she is undecided on parenthood. “I love being an adult,” she began. “I have a rule that I don’t look up or don’t look down at anyone. I just look, which allows me the clarity to see the world for what it really is and people for who they really are. I look at myself almost every day in the mirror and I say, ‘I am a woman.’ I’m 31 now, and I still don’t know if I want kids or not. I feel like my fans kind of are my kids in some way. I’ve heard Dolly [Parton, Cyrus’ godmother] say that too, because she didn’t have kids.”
As for her friendship with Beyoncé? Cyrus shared the origin story of their Cowboy Carter collaboration, “II Most Wanted,” and said that it represents their friendship well.
Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus singing together when they first met in September 2008.
“I wrote that song, like, two and a half years ago,” she said. “My mom would always go, ‘I love that song so much.’ So when Beyoncé reached out to me about music, I thought of it right away because it really encompasses our relationship. I told her, ‘We don’t have to get country; we are country. We’ve been country.’ I said, ‘You know, between you being from Texas and me being from Tennessee, so much of us is going to be in this song.’ Getting to write a song, not just sing, for Beyoncé was a dream come true.”
Cyrus recalled first meeting Beyoncé and Rihanna when she was a teenager: “We performed together when I was really young, probably 14, at the Stand Up to Cancer benefit. I was sandwiched between Beyoncé and Rihanna, who were, you know, 5’10” and in heels. Their hips were, like, up to my shoulders. They were these powerful, fully realized, grown women, and I’m pretty sure I had braces on the back of my teeth. They were protective of me.”
Cyrus continued: “That Christmas, Beyoncé sent me a House of Deréon jacket that said Miley on the back in gold studs, which is my favorite, and some jeans with my name on it. In one of my songs, ‘Cattitude,’ I say, ‘And for my 16th birthday, I got Deréon from the house of the queen.’”