Miley Cyrus Says She and Bob Iger Were Part of a Plan to Revitalize Disney

The House of Mouse has announced 14 new Disney Legends at the  D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event weekend and Miley Cyrus has one thing to say: Disney owes her and Bob Iger a whole lot.

Miley Cyrus’s long career with Disney is well-documented, so we will just do the short version. Beginning in 2006, Cyrus portrayed Miley Stewart in Hannah Montana, an ordinary teen with a secret side gig as a massively popular singer whose father looked and acted just like her real-life dad, Billy Ray Cyrus. Hannah Montana was one of the Disney Channel’s most popular series ever, quickly becoming a franchise that included soundtrack albums, concert tours, and every kind of branded merch imaginable.

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Although Miley Cyrus notoriously pushed against her Disney idol image and embarked on a provocative solo music career, she has rarely strayed far from the company. As recently as last year, she starred in the Disney+ streaming exclusive concert film Endless Summer Vacation (Backyard Sessions). The singer has also been extremely blunt in saying she feels that she has made a lot of money for The Walt Disney Company and deserves every honor they can give her.

She told W Magazine:

“[Disney] was a great, safe experience overall. People have 50- or 60-year-long careers, but mine has been close to 20 years, and I’m 31. I have been in the public for more of my life than I haven’t. Disney, they were doing very well off of the amount of work that I was putting in as a child. I don’t have any bad feelings about that. It’s just the truth. And so I think they have to give me [the Disney Legends award]. I’m excited to celebrate that with the fans. Something I wanted to talk about with you is celebration versus competition, because competition is really of no interest to me. I don’t think of other artists as opponents. Artists are not the same as athletes, playing a zero-sum game and keeping a score. There isn’t a score in art.”

Now, Miley Cyrus has officially been inaugurated as the youngest Disney Legend to date. She was inducted in a Ryan Seacrest-hosted ceremony that also included Colleen Atwood, Angela Bassett, Martha Blanding, James L. Brooks, James Cameron, Steve Ditko, Harrison Ford, Mark Henn, Frank Oz, Kelly Ripa, Joe Rohde, John Williams, and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Miley Cyrus was introduced by country singer Lainey Wilson (who also performed the Hannah Montana theme song “Best of Both Worlds”) and was honored with a tribute video including John Travolta, Bret Michaels, and Chappell Roan. But, as one might expect, Cyrus was the star of her own acceptance.

In her speech, Cyrus said, “A little bit of everything has changed since that day, but at the same time, nothing has changed at all. I stand here still proud to have been Hannah Montana because she made Miley in so many ways. This award is dedicated to Hannah and all of her amazing, loyal fans and to everyone who has made my dream a reality. To quote the legend herself, this is the life.”

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But prior to that, she made the very understandable claim that a big part of Disney’s modern success was due to her and Bob Iger, who first became CEO of the company less than a year before Hanna Montana premiered. Cyrus said:

“In 2005, Disney was on a mission to rebuild and reimagine the company — that’s why they hired Bob Iger and me. I remember this clearly because it was during the auditioning process of Hannah Montana. There was a buzz in that Burbank Disney office, where it’s rumored they create all of us Disney kids. I definitely wasn’t created in a lab and if I was, there must have been a bug in the system which caused me to malfunction somewhere between the years of 2013 and 2016. Sorry Mickey!”

While Bob Iger’s leadership of Disney has come under some understandable criticism of late, it is difficult to argue that he and Miley Cyrus weren’t two of the most visible people in the company in its recent golden age. She really has nothing to apologize to Mickey about.

What are your favorite Miley Cyrus memories?