Steve Pratt talks to Miley Cyrus and her country-singing father Billy Ray Cyrus about the impact of Hannah Montana and playing father-daughter in a movie.
MILEY Cyrus is real, Hannah Montana isn’t.
That needs to be made clear from the start because the two tend to get blurred. Miley, a 16-year-old from Nashville, found fame of the sort that only a teenager in a TV show can playing Hannah in the Disney Channel’s hit TV series.
Hannah – and this is where it gets complicated – is the alter ego of the fictional Miley Stewart. She’s a blonde singer who, when the song is finished, takes off her wig and goes home as Miley Stewart to Tennessee. That she’s played by Miley Cyrus, daughter of country music superstar Billy Ray Cyrus, only adds to the confusion.
After the TV series and the best-selling CDs comes Hannah Montana – The Movie, which continued the trend by breaking records on its opening at US cinemas.
Miley sits down to talk about the movie, after admitting she’s been shopping. Not that she bought anything, she didn’t have enough time on a busy promotional visit to this country.
In the movie, Miley Stewart’s father (played by Miley’s real dad Billy Ray Cyrus) sees that Hannah’s popularity is taking over his daughter’s life and takes her back home to bring her to her senses.
Some of the differences between the small and big screen Hannah are obvious.
“It’s a lot different being on a sound stage because on our TV show obviously we’re not on a beach but a beach-looking sound stage,” she explains.
“Instead of being in a place that looks like Nashville, we’re there. Some were worried about ‘this place is going to be more expensive to shoot’ but we wanted everything to look the way it was,” she says.
“There’s nothing in this film that I would say is fake. Everything is genuine. That’s the great thing about the movie, everything is so realistic – we really were in my home town.”
So far, so sensible. But being a teen idol means Miley has to handle trivial inquiries about previous visits to London (she recalls going on the London Eye), about what she’d wish for if a fairy godmother granted her one wish (“for gossip sites to go away”) and which period she’d like to travel back to in time (“the Eighties so I could tease my hair, wear leggings and listen to rock‘n’roll”).
Some seemingly silly questions reveal more than you’d think. Like choosing fruit over veg. “I don’t eat vegetables. None.
They look funny. Most of them are green and eating anything green is just a weird concept to me,” she says.
And a question about whether she thinks she looks fatter on film is loaded in a society where teenage eating disorders and pressure to be thin are hot topics.
SHE negotiates the question with skill. “I think you end up picking yourself apart,” she says. “It’s better if you can look at it like a viewer instead of the actor in it. It’s just like vanity gets in the way of that. You don’t want to be just staring at you, but get the entire picture, the whole film.
“That’s what’s so important. It’s about us as a whole. The last person on the call sheet makes a difference. Every person, every extra does. The scene that proves it is Hoedown Throwndown – every extra is so crucial to that scene. It’s really important not to just focus on yourself.”
Cyrus doesn’t think fame was her motivation when she started trying for the role of Hannah Montana at the age of 12.
The media wasn’t something she looked into. Now when she sees what’s happening to her, she thinks she was very smart not to want that amount of attention when she was younger.
“My dad has been inspiring to me because he got told no so many times when he was trying to first become a musician. I watched him and it was hard. To see someone who’s successful and wasn’t told yes right away was inspiring to me.”
Billy Ray repays the compliment with some good old country common sense. He likes that the film takes them back to their roots to discover who they are, why they do what they do and what they believe in.
“Back To Tennessee, the song that I wrote, is the title track of the new album.
It best describes for me the journey that Miley and I have been on. The fact that it’s important to always stay focused on the future and know where you want to go, but most importantly never forget where you come from.”
He reckons he’s pretty laid-back as a dad.
“Miley, I trust her so much,” he says. “She has a great head on her shoulders and makes pretty good decisions most of the time. Even has enough common sense that if she makes a bad one, she makes adjustments and knows that’s what life is.
“I try to be a friend for Miley. I know that’s not everyone’s parenting style. I try to be a friend, a partner as a singer, actor, songwriter. And let her be a teenage girl and do her thing.”
■ Hannah Montana (U) opens in cinemas tomorrow.
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