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Hannah Montana was truly a family affair, and Tish Cyrus made sure of it.
Miley Cyrus‘ mother recently made an appearance on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, where she revealed how she helped Billy Ray Cyrus land his role on the hit Disney Channel sitcom.
“He had done ‘Achy Breaky [Heart]’ and nothing else was working,” Tish recalled, referring to Billy Ray’s hit 1992 single. “And then I brought Miley out to audition for Hannah and she had gotten it. One of the casting directors said a joke, like, ‘Ugh, too bad we can’t afford her real dad.’ And I said, ‘Oh, maybe you can.’”
She explained that Billy Ray was filming a different television show in Toronto, where the family was living at the time. Miley’s new job at Disney would require Tish to move to Los Angeles to be with her, and the idea of splitting her family up “stressed” her out.
“I was like, ‘I have to bring all the kids,’ and so that’s when I said to Billy Ray, you should come audition for the dad,” she recalled. “Because they love you and they’re really interested. Yes, it would be a pay cut but our family could be together.”
Billy Ray ended up joining his daughter on Hannah Montana, which ran from 2006 to 2011. He played her father, Robby Ray Stewart, who helped her conceal her pop star identity as she tried to live as a regular teenager in Malibu.
Soon after the show ended, Billy Ray told GQ that working on the sitcom “destroyed” his family.
He even admitted that he wished they had never done the show, even though it helped launch his daughter’s career. “I hate to say it, but yes, I do. Yeah. I’d take it back in a second,” he said. “For my family to be here and just be everybody okay, safe and sound and happy and normal, would have been fantastic. Heck, yeah. I’d erase it all in a second if I could.”
But Tish denied that the show was detrimental to their family.
“Absolutely not,” she said, “I just think he was having a moment.”
Tish and Billy Ray have since separated in 2023.
There has been chatter online that Miley and Billy Ray have not been on good terms since the separation, which has only worsened since Miley pointedly didn’t thank him in her Grammy acceptance speech.
