While the show was fictional, Miley recently revealed that its theme hit a lot closer to home than she originally thought — and it wasn’t always the best of both worlds.
Miley talked about her relationship with fame and Hannah in an appearance on the podcast Rock This With Allison Hagendorf, saying that at the time, she began to act like Hannah Montana in her real life too.
Identity crisis
“Talk about an identity crisis. I was a character almost as often as I was myself,” Miley explained. “The concept of the show is that when you’re this character, when you have this alter ego, you’re valuable. You’ve got millions of fans, you’re the biggest star in the world.
Then the concept was that when I looked like myself ... when I didn’t have the wig on anymore, no one cared about me. I wasn’t a star anymore.” According to Miley, the show’s concept was “drilled into her head” IRL. “Like, without being Hannah Montana, no one cares about you.”
This led Miley to create what she called ‘characterised version’ of herself to present to the world, starting with her outrageous, over-the-top Bangerz era. “I never created a character that wasn’t me, but I was aware of how people saw me and I kind of played into it a little bit,” she said.
Miley has talked about her complicated relationship with Hannah before. Last year, she told Rolling Stone that there weren’t clear boundaries between the show and her life. “I had to evolve because Hannah was larger than life, larger than me. I felt like I was never going to amount to the success of Hannah Montana,” she shared.
“Really, Hannah Montana was not a character. That wasn’t what the show is about. It was about a normal girl with a wig on. Everything was always in me. The concept of the show, it’s me. I’ve had to really come to terms with that and not be third-person about it.”