Eric Charbonneau/Le Studio/WireimageEven though he flaked last time, The View kept the hot seat with Billy Ray Cyrus' name on it open.
And, what do you know, it doesn't sound as if he'd like to take his daughter's Hannah Montana fame "back in a second" anymore.
Why? Because things with his family are currently "the best they've ever been."
"I would love to set the record straight," Cyrus said in an interviewing airing Friday. "I love Hannah Montana. I love Disney. I love our fans who've been with us throughout this whole show. This has been an incredible journey."
When your life turns into "more of an interview or something out of a page than what you're living, then those lines can get blurred," he said, referring to the automatic hullabaloo created after Miley's salvia scandal when he told GQ that Hannah Montana had "destroyed [his] family."
"That didn't tear my family apart," Cyrus says now. "Now fame, fame is a different animal...you've got to be careful with that thing because it can...all things considered, hey, it's all good."
When asked about Miley's reaction after he threw his 18-year-old daughter's career under the bus, Cyrus said that's all in the past.
Their relationship is "the best it's ever been," he said. "I feel like I kind of got my Miley back in a way. I feel like we are the daddy and the daughter that we were before Hannah Montana happened. Our communication, we have laughed a lot in the last couple of days."
Well, if it's already been a couple of days...
But Cyrus insists that he's got a handle on the real Miley.
"I was talking to Miley last night and she was talking about New York and then I noticed that she felt," he paused, "there was a sadness." He asked if she was all right, and she "sent me a picture and I thought it looked like she'd been crying and I asked her and she said 'Well there's some stuff about a picture and they said I was drunk.'"
Cyrus says that Miley told him she had been at a restaurant meeting with songwriter Dr. Luke, who penned her hit "Party in the U.S.A." And when she walked outside, she was facing the usual horde of paparazzi and couldn't see through all the flashes, causing her to stumble. And then word got around that she looked like she was drunkenly stumbling out of a restaurant.
"I went back and relooked at the picture," Cyrus said, "and I go 'Baby, I'm sorry it's just got to be tough. She said ‘It's embarrassing. It hurts my feelings' and she said, most importantly, 'It was a lie. I wasn't drinking. I wasn't drunk. I was just trying to get to my car after a meeting.'"
"Communication, I think, is one of the biggest problems that we as human beings have in this whole world," he added, "and I think for the first time me and my entire family are finally communicating with each other in a way...Things are really the best they've ever been."
So he and Miley are talking again, but what about the other woman in his life? He and wife Trish seem to be spending a lot of time together for a couple on the road to divorce...
"I dropped the divorce," Cyrus confirmed. "I wanted to put my family back together."
One upbeat, emotional interview at a time.