{"id":356134,"date":"2026-03-24T21:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T21:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/356134\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T21:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T21:00:08","slug":"inside-miley-cyrus-hannah-montana-anniversary-concert-taping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/356134\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Miley Cyrus’ ‘Hannah Montana’ Anniversary Concert Taping"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAfter the first renditions of her Hannah Montana<\/a> hits \u201cThis Is the Life\u201d and \u201cThe Climb,\u201d Miley Cyrus ruffled her period-perfect blonde bangs<\/a> as she settled back into the character that launched her career. \u201cI used to think of Hannah as something separate of myself,\u201d she told the audience of 215 superfans who gathered at Sunset Gower Studios last month to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Disney\u2019s \u201cHannah Montana\u201d with a concert taping. \u201cThis special is my reclaiming of merging Hannah and Miley together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCyrus had gathered her most devoted fans \u2014 so devoted, in fact, that several hopped on flights from Brazil and London with less than 24 hours\u2019 notice \u2014 to honor the milestone that she referred to as her \u201cHannahversary.\u201d (\u201cI get so mad when people call this an anniversary,\u201d she said.) It\u2019s easy to forget that a superstar like Cyrus once worked in the Disney trenches as a teen actress with dreams of stardom: Over the past few decades, Cyrus has shed her skin anew as one of pop\u2019s most magnetic stars, a true creature of reinvention who came of age in the public eye just as her TV character once had. For Cyrus, \u201cHannah Montana\u201d wasn\u2019t just a launching pad\u00a0\u2014\u00a0it was also a parallel to her life being written in real time.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne fan in attendance, Jen, who came to the taping with two friends, took a broader view of the \u201cHannah Montana\u201d curio: \u201cIt was great seeing someone do normal girl stuff,\u201d she told me before the taping. \u201cLiving in Los Angeles is celebrity culture, and it showed that celebrities are real people. They\u2019re still going through the same themes of family and friends as you are. The core is the things that you all go through.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s why all these years later, the true \u201cHannah Montana\u201d fans \u2014 the ones scoped out by event organizers who had online paper trails proving their devotion \u2014\u00a0descended on Hollywood to attend the concert taping portion of the special. The week prior, Cyrus had been spotted filming in full Hannah Montana regalia cruising Malibu, where her character lived, and had filmed a sit-down Q&A with true superfan and \u201cCall Her Daddy\u201d host Alex Cooper, who watched the concert taping from the back of the room next to Cyrus\u2019 mother Tish.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the taping, fans had lined up as early as 5:30 a.m. to see their idol. This, they later explained in TikToks and X posts, was something they never thought would happen. Their lives were about to be changed.<\/p>\n

\n\tAttendees were encouraged to dress in something inspired by Hannah Montana, and boy did they. Everywhere you looked, it was like a Limited Too exploded: coral dresses over magenta tights, butterfly clips, tiny scarves, even tinier handbags. Vintage t-shirts from early Hannah Montana tours. Cowboy boots as far as the eye could see \u2014\u00a0that is, if your Y2K sunglasses straight out of a J. Lo video weren\u2019t too tinted. It was as though Hannah Montana\u2019s coveted closet, which was recreated on the soundstage set, had become sentient and unionized on a Hollywood lot. At one point, as we waited in one of the many lines we endured, a girl named Ali gushed to her friend about spotting someone\u2019s yellow zebra-print top and single pink glove: \u201cIt sent tingles down my spine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDressing the part was a given. After all, these Hannah Montana fans wanted to be there. Badly. As we stood outside the studio, a woman named Gabriela told me that she had arrived from Brazil only an hour ago. She had gotten a text at 8 p.m. last night and was on a plane three hours later to Los Angeles. It was a nail-biter, she said, as her flight got delayed an additional three hours. Still, she wouldn\u2019t have missed it for the world. \u201cShe\u2019s everything I wanted to be,\u201d she said, slipping off her jean jacket to reveal a bicep-length tattoo of Cyrus on the backside of her left arm. What exactly was it that had made her such a big fan? \u201cThe fact that she\u2019s grown up with me. She\u2019s so versatile. The fact that she\u2019s always changing \u2014 it\u2019s amazing to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat was the unifying theme of everyone who had taken a Summer Friday in February (it was a piping 90+ degrees in Hollywood). These superfans connected with Hannah Montana in ways that two decades somehow couldn\u2019t weaken. \u201cEveryone says you should kill your inner child,\u201d an attendee named Love told me. \u201cBut she would have loved this.\u201d Love had driven with her friends Amy and Gabby to the lot, listening to Hannah Montana songs along the way. \u201cIt was an escape watching the show,\u201d recalls Gabby. \u201cI felt like I was in Malibu with her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTo be a Cyrus fan, and on top of it a \u201cHannah Montana\u201d fan, required unfettered allegiance. What came next put their fandom to the ultimate test: hours of waiting to be let into the soundstage, which felt, quite frankly, like a sanity check. Attendees congregated on the roof of a five-floor parking garage that, even at 10:15 a.m., felt like being locked in a tanning bed. Two small tents shaded those who got there earliest, leaving throngs of fans \u2014 the rest of us \u2014 to bake in the sun as security locked our phones in pouches. (It\u2019s not unusual, it should be noted, that tapings make attendees wait and wait. That the production team behind this special didn\u2019t account for an unseasonably hot day was an egregious error.)<\/p>\n

\n\tWaiting became a standard of existence. What followed was an hour of mulling about the lot before we were moved to an empty windowless room divided by a chain-link fence. \u201cI want to see how many lines we can go in before we get there,\u201d said one male fan. \u201cAt least there\u2019s air conditioning.\u201d That was, until the A\/C seemed to cut out somewhere around what felt like the 45-minute mark. It was a sobering lesson in our dependence on technology: without our phones, time didn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

\n\tEventually, we were brought into the soundstage where a hype man impressively excelled in the thankless task of keeping the energy high. \u201cHannah Montana will be here in five minutes!\u201d he vamped, making that same promise for what felt like every 10 minutes. It was somewhere around 1:30 p.m., I think, when Cyrus finally poked her head out from behind a curtain next to the stage. Finally, it was time, a moment 20 years in the making. What\u2019s an extra three hours of waiting?<\/p>\n

\n\tCyrus, of course, was as vibrant as ever as she reinhabited Hannah Montana. The character seemed to come right back to her as she emerged from backstage with black shades and a black dress, clutching a gold-studded microphone. The taping itself was pretty standard as far as these things go: Cyrus sang \u201cThis Is the Life\u201d and \u201cThe Climb\u201d live twice before exiting the stage and reemerging to lip-sync the songs for a third time. \u201cIt\u2019s a little confusing, huh?\u201d she told the crowd as she killed time between performances. \u201cHybrid Hannah: a little bit of Hannah, a little bit of Miley.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was during this brief break that Cyrus seemed to take in the moment. \u201cI was on the TV in [your] living room,\u201d she said. \u201cEverything we wrote, we got to be with you all in your homes\u2026 That\u2019s what my character didn\u2019t want to let go of.\u201d She acknowledged the absurdity of the show\u2019s premise \u2014\u00a0that slapping on a wig was such a transformation that no one in her school would realize she\u2019s moonlighting as a pop star \u2014\u00a0with her signature wit. \u201cDisney was the first to do drag on TV,\u201d she quipped. After she lip-synced the songs for a third time, she appraised her own performance with a snappy reference to \u201cRu Paul\u2019s Drag Race\u201d: \u201cShantay, you stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was fitting, then, that choreographer Jamal Sims, a regular on \u201cDrag Race,\u201d was here to instruct fans on how to react to Cyrus\u2019 third and final song, \u201cBest of Both Worlds.\u201d Producers handed out signs for fans to hold up during the performance that featured six backup dancers and a massive \u201cHannah Montana\u201d marquee hung at the back of the stage. For each rendition, Cyrus emerged from a trap door in the stage and sang the \u201cHannah Montana\u201d theme song, pretending to shred a guitar at just the right moment. Pyrotechnics flashed behind her. The gratification was immediate; tears glistened on fans\u2019 cheeks as the lights pulsed on stage.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd with that came the last burst of confetti at the song\u2019s final run-through. It was the end, the closing of a chapter that could very well have never been opened. It was time for Hannah Montana to go back into dormancy, forever minted in a Disney special. By then, it was 3:30 p.m., and no one really seemed to want it to end. That, it was clear, is the stuff that legends are made of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the first renditions of her Hannah Montana hits \u201cThis Is the Life\u201d and \u201cThe Climb,\u201d Miley Cyrus…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,20156,85,46,20155,409],"class_list":{"0":"post-356134","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-hannah-montana","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-miley-cyrus","13":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}