Miley Cyrus says that the massive losses she suffered when her Malibu home with then-fiance Liam Hemsworth burned to the ground in the 2018 Woolsey Fire ultimately led to the couple’s demise later down the road. The 28-year-old singer explained to Howard Stern on his Dec. 2 SiriusXM radio show that losing literally everything but Liam, 30, caused her so much trauma. As a result, they rushed into marrying six weeks later on Dec. 23, 2018 at her Nashville home, which turned out to be a big mistake.
“We were together since 16,” Miley explained about Liam, as they fell in love while filming the 2010 love story The Last Song. “Our house burned down. We had been like, engaged — I don’t know if we really ever thought we were actually going to get married.”
“But when we lost our house in Malibu — which if you listen to my voice pre- and post-fire, they’re very different so that trauma really affected my voice. And I was actually in South Africa, so I couldn’t come home, and like, my animals were tied to a post at the beach,” she revealed. Liam heroically saved the couple’s numerous pets as the fire roared towards their home, getting them off the property to safety.
“I lost everything. I had polaroids of Elvis, like front row, passed on from — I got a couple grandmas to give me their Elvis polaroids. I always became friends with my friends’ grandmas so I could get the goods from the artists I love,” Miley recalled about her losses. “I had so much and it was all gone, every song I had ever written was in that house,” she added. “Every photograph of me that my parents had given to me, all my scripts, I lost everything. And so in trying to put that back together, instead of going, ‘Oh, nature kind of did something I couldn’t do for myself; it forced me to let go,’ I ran toward the fire,” the “Midnight Sky” singer recalled.
“Which is not abnormal, a lot of animals do this and end up dying, like deers run into the forest. You’re attracted to that heat and me being an intense person and not wanting to sit with it, and not wanting to go, you know, ‘What could be purposeful about this?’” she explained. Instead, she held tightly on to the one thing she had left, which was Liam. The pair surprised fans by tying the knot just before Christmas following the fire, despite their life in Malibu being in ruins.
“I just clung to what I had left of that house, which was me and him. And I really do and did love him very, very, very much and still do, always will,” Miley confessed. The couple’s marriage went downhill fast, as by the summer of 2019 they were vacationing in different parts of the world. Miley ended up getting photographed in Lake Como, Italy making out with Brody Jenner‘s ex Kaitlynn Carter, 32, poolside in bikinis on Aug. 9, 2019. A day later her rep announced Miley’s separation from Liam and less then two weeks later he filed for divorce.
In the end, “there was too much conflict….When I come home, I want to be anchored by someone,” she told Howard. “I don’t get off on drama or fighting.” Less than two months after first being photographed with Kaitlynn, Miley embarked on a 10 month romance with Australian singer Cody Simpson. Liam has dated model Gabriella Brooks on and off for the past year. Neither returned to rebuild their Malibu property, as Miley now lives in Hidden Hills, CA, while Liam bought a home in Byron Bay, Australia near his beloved brother Chris Hemsworth, 37.