Miley Cyrus
It was no secret that Miley tried hard to break away from her Disney persona after her time in Hannah Montana. In a February 2019 interview on the “RuPaul: What’s The Tee” podcast, she admitted that she hated it at first.
“From 18 to probably two years ago, I hated it,” she said of her Disney days. “I didn’t really get to be a kid very much, because I worked so much, but I wanted that.”
But now, Miley has grown to be thankful for her time on the Disney show.
“Since the last record, my last record was called ‘Younger Now’ and it says, even though it’s not who I am, I’m not afraid of who I used to be. That was my epiphany,” she continued.
Although she’s at peace with it now, in the past, the “Wrecking Ball” singer has spoken negatively about the network quite a few times. In 2016, she even accused Disney of underpaying her.
“I mean, at one point — they’ll probably kill me for saying it — I was probably the least-paid person on my cast because I didn’t know any better,” she told Elle Magazine. “I was just like, ‘I can be on Disney! Yeah, I want to do it! My name was Miley on the show, but I didn’t own my name. My mom started understanding how many people take advantage of a child, so she hired smart people to protect me in that way.”
The actress even admitted that being on the show had a negative impact on her mental health.
“I was told for so long what a girl is supposed to be from being on [Hannah Montana]. I was made to look like someone that I wasn’t, which probably caused some body dysmorphia because I had been made pretty every day for so long, and then when I wasn’t on that show, it was like, ‘Who the f–k am I?'” she told Marie Claire in 2015.
And it probably had a lot to do with her age.
“I think what was hard for me was balancing everything,” she told W Magazine in 2017. “I think it got harder when I started touring as both — I toured as Hannah Montana and as myself. I think that’s probably what’s a little bit wrong with me now! I mark that up to doing some extreme damage in my psyche as an adult person. I liked being in the Disney universe because I didn’t know anything else. I knew I was getting to live what I wanted to do. I think now that I’m older now, I realize that’s a lot to put on a kid.”