Miley Cyrus is still reckoning with the backlash she received from her post-Hannah Montana music career.
After wrapping up her four-season run on the beloved Disney sitcom, Cyrus rebranded herself with a much more provocative image to fit her albums Can’t Be Tamed and Bangerz. But the sudden change inspired outrage that Cyrus is still processing to this day.
“I was the first person to maybe ever be canceled, I guess,” Cyrus says in a preview clip of Oct. 5’s CBS Sunday Mornings, looking back at that tumultuous point in her career. “I didn’t know until I was older actually how brutal it really was.”
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Miley Cyrus performs during the 2013 MTV VMA’s
The singer maintained that despite all the anger from the masses, she was living it up. And not just for show.
“It was very challenging for other people but for me, it was a good time,” she shared. “It looked fun and it was fun. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized how harsh…”
Trailing off, Cyrus explained that she now views the reaction more critically: “I would never now, being where I am, ever look at anyone in their 20s from the view of who I am now,” she said. “But at the time, it was awesome.”
Cyrus, though. is not the first to face (and survive) a wave of outrage from her fanbase and the wider public. The 2000’s saw Britney Spears hit a low point due to intense public scrutiny and Ashlee Simpson catch serious flack for lip-synching through an SNL performance. Elsewhere, actors like Anne Hathaway have admitted to struggling career-wise after earning the ire of social media.
As for the former Hannah Montana star, the frustration sparked back in the early 2010s didn’t stop her from continuing to top charts and garner acclaim with new music, including 2023’s Grammy-winning release, “Flowers.” And now, the singer also finds herself in a position to defend the era of her career criticized for risqué outfits and provocative performances that were an extreme departure from her squeaky clean Disney Channel persona.
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Chatting with British Vogue in 2023, Cyrus explained, “I was creating attention for myself because I was dividing myself from a character I had played. Anyone, when you’re 20 or 21, you have more to prove. ‘I’m not my parents.’ ‘I am who I am.'”
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Miley Cyrus onstage during the 66th GRAMMY Awards at Crypto.com Arena on Feb. 4, 2024
She continued, “I carried some guilt and shame around myself for years because of how much controversy and upset I really caused. Now that I’m an adult, I realize how harshly I was judged. I was harshly judged as a child by adults and now, as an adult, I realize that I would never harshly judge a child.”
More recently, chatting on Monica Lewinsky’s Reclaiming podcast in June, Cyrus said the negativity reached a point where it began impacting her personal relationships.
“I lost everything during that time in my personal life because of the choices I was making professionally,” she told Lewinsky, adding that the criticism “hit so hard that she was “embarrassed.”
Cyrus continued, “I remember my brother at one point, he was saying, ‘I don’t judge you, but you could understand how hard it is for me to go to school, and you be my sister.'”
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