Country crooner Billy Ray Cyrus blames Disney's "Hannah Montana" for his daughter Miley Cyrus' issues, angrily saying "the damn show destroyed my family."
Blaming publicists and Miley's handlers, Billy Ray gives an anguished interview in GQ's March issue, where he adds he wishes "Hannah Montana" never happened.
"I hate to say it, but yes, I do. I'd take it back in a second," said Billy Ray, who is divorcing Miley's mother, Tish.
Reflecting on Miley's controversial moments -- including seductive photos on the Internet, pole-dancing at the Teen Choice Awards, and posing for Vanity Fair draped in a sheet -- Cyrus says he should have been more strict, and accuses her handlers for going too far to promote her, and then using him as the fall guy.
He tells GQ, "Every time the train went off the track . . . her people, or as they say in today's news, her handlers, every time they'd put [the blame on] me . . . I took it because I'm her daddy . . . OK, nail me to the cross.
"I'm scared for her. She's got a lot of people around her that's putting her in a great deal of danger. I want to get her sheltered from the storm."
Talking about Miley's 18th birthday party at LA bar Trousdale, he says, "You know why I didn't go? Because they were having it in a bar. It was wrong. It was for 21 years old and up . . . all them people, they all wanted me to fly out so that then when all the bad press came they could say, 'Daddy endorsed this stuff.' I started realizing I'm being used."
Then photos surfaced of Miley smoking the legal herb salvia from a bong. Billy Ray, who gave the interview to GQ's Chris Heath five days after the photos emerged, says he hadn't spoken to Miley since, but confronted one of her handlers: "They told me it was none of my business."
But he admits, "I should have said, 'Enough is enough -- it's getting dangerous and somebody's going to get hurt' . . . Honestly, I didn't know the ball was out of bounds until it was way up in the stands somewhere."
Cyrus described his communication with Miley as "good enough to know it could be a lot better." Her rep didn't get back to us.
ETA: More Excerpts From GQ
Cyrus also wants to make one thing clear: "For the record, I've never made a dime off of Miley."
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He says he's worried about the path his daughter is taking, and worries she'll end up like other Hollywood tragedies. "Kurt (Cobain) was one of those guys. That's why I'm concerned about Miley. I think that his world was just spinning so fast and he had so many people around him that didn't help him. Like Anna Nicole Smith — you could see that train wreck coming. I was actually trying to reach out to Anna Nicole Smith, because I kept telling Tish and everybody around me, going, 'This is a disaster.'
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After the first two seasons he felt things changing. "The business was driving a wedge between us," he says. He tells me that he has never been able to discipline his kids and that he now wonders whether that was a mistake. "How many interviews did I give and say, 'You know what's important between me and Miley is I try to be a friend to my kids'? I said it a lot. And sometimes I would even read other parents might say, 'You don't need to be a friend, you need to be a parent.' Well, I'm the first guy to say to them right now: You were right. I should have been a better parent. I should have said, 'Enough is enough—it's getting dangerous and somebody's going to get hurt.' I should have, but I didn't. Honestly, I didn't know the ball was out of bounds until it was way up in the stands somewhere."
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In January 2010, shooting for Hannah Montana's final episodes began. "Season four, it was a disaster," he says. "I was going to work every single day knowing that my family had fallen apart, but yet I had to sit in front of that camera. I look back and I go, How did I ever make it through that? I must be a better actor than I thought."
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"Somewhere along this journey," he says, "both mine and Miley's faith has been shaken. That saddens me the most."
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Not long after the party, Cyrus heard that Miley's people were looking for something. That maybe his daughter's phone had been stolen. "And that was on the heels, the week previous, of some pictures from Spain—a five- or seven-day period of just boom! There's a train wreck happening and my daughter's right in the middle of it." Now he was hearing "stories of the handlers trying to make kids' computers disappear and their phones disappear." That's all he knew. "I didn't know what the footage was."
So he spoke with one of the handlers.
"They told me," he says, his contempt and despair still naked and fresh, "it was none of my business."
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In recent weeks, one more competing version of the Billy Ray and Miley Cyrus melodrama has emerged: Saturday Night Live's mesmerizing spoof The Miley Cyrus Show....Before I mention these SNL sketches, I can't guess what the real Billy Ray's reaction to them may be. He has plenty of ego and preciousness and oversensitivity, and I don't think his own version of who he is often corresponds with how he is portrayed by the world, but he also has an abundant sweetness of spirit, a willingness to believe in the generosity of others, and a kind of innocence, too. So when he tells me, "I laughed so hard," I try to work out whether he knows this is the smartest thing to say, or whether it's genuinely how he feels.
"Everything's up for interpretation, I guess," he says. "I just choose to see it as funny."
And maybe that's not so foolish after all. For one thing, it is pretty funny. And—as he learns anew week by week—there are worse ways his family life can be served up as entertainment. Here, safe within these sketches, he's with his daughter, they're on grown-up TV, everyone's laughing, and everything's going to be fine. "Actually," he says, "I think it's a little more funny than real life, to be honest."
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