Miley Cyrus Subtly Shades Dad Billy Ray Cyrus In Netflix Interview With David Letterman

Many of us grew up watching Billy Ray Cyrus and Miley Cyrus star in the hit Disney Channel show Hannah Montana. But in recent years, the real-life father-daughter duo seem to have drifted apart, with many speculating that it had something to do with Billy Ray marrying (and now divorcing) a woman nearly the same age as Miley. In the Season 5 premiere of David Letterman‘s Netflix show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, the Grammy Award-winning singer addressed her alleged estrangement from her father.

Filming from the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, Miley looked back on getting the role of Miley Stewart/Hannah Montana — a normal girl by day and pop star by night — when she was just a young teenager.

The gig forced the Cyrus family to uproot their lives in Tennessee and move to California so Miley could get her start in show business — and do so alongside Billy Ray, who played her father Robby Ray Stewart in the Disney series.

But before Letterman could get into the current family dynamics, Miley appeared to subtly shade her dad when she was asked who from her family moved out to L.A. with her.

“So, at first, it was just me — my mom is gonna be better at this. I have a terrible memory,” she said. “Because I also inherited the narcissism from my father that I don’t know anything about my siblings except for the part that I was doing.”

Miley added, “It’s OK. I was moving to L.A. and that’s all I really knew. I was so young, too, that I was just excited that I was gonna get to be on Disney Channel because I watched Disney Channel.”

While the star named her mom Tish Cyrus as her “hero,” she did have some kind words to say about Billy Ray later on in the interview.

“I’m grateful for first, his genes. My dad has great hair and I got that,” she admitted. “But he also — he has a relationship and a foot on the ground to, like, the real and to nature and he always did, even when he was super famous.”

Miley added that her dad helped her navigate fame as she grew up in the public eye.

“I’m grateful for being able to watch him ahead of me,” she said. “He’s almost, like, given me this map and there is a map of what to do and what not to do, and he’s guided me on both.”

Miley said Billy Ray had a very different upbringing than her, noting that he grew up “very poor” in a “very small town” with divorced parents. “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.

However, she also noted that her parents “can’t be weighed on the same scale” when it comes to whether she credits them equally for her career.

“Without my dad, I know — I mean, not just literally I wouldn’t be sitting in this chair, I wouldn’t exist — but I would not, who I am as a person, it wouldn’t exist because my dad as a creative and, like, as an artist in 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,” she said.

Miley continued, “I think a lot of his perspective on reality and on life I’ve inherited from him more so than the way that I was raised, which, really, my mom raised me.”

The actress concluded by seemingly shutting down rumors of estrangement between her and her father.

“I think what is so beautiful is that my parents, they served their children, and I know this,” she said. “My parents served us and sacrificed so much for us. Anything we dreamed of, they made possible.”

My Next Guest Needs No Introduction Season 5 is currently streaming on Netflix.