Why Miley Cyrus Thinks It's 'Ridiculous' She Was Fired From Hotel Transylvania Over Penis Cake

During an appearance on Tuesday's episode of the Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky podcast, the 32-year-old singer detailed how she was "fired" from the 2012 children's animated film, Hotel Transylvania, after she gave her then-boyfriend, Liam Hemsworth, a penis-shaped cake for his birthday, and photos surfaced online that showed her licking it.

"I, as a joke, got my boyfriend a penis cake for his birthday and I got fired. I was the lead actress in Hotel Transylvania, and they fired me and replaced me because I had made an inappropriate adult joke. But I was 18," said Cyrus, who had been cast in the lead voice acting role of Mavis Dracula, the daughter of Adam Sandler's Count "Drac" Dracula. (She was ultimately replaced by Selena Gomez.)

The Grammy winner explained why she believed her axing over the cake was "ridiculous."

"What felt ridiculous to me about getting fired [over] a penis cake was that they sell penis cakes for all bachelorettes. In Nashville, Tennessee, you can get penis cakes. It's not that big of a deal," she told Lewinsky. "I thought this [was] a very simple, not vulgar joke. This is silly. You can do this for all bachelorette parties. They make necklaces and cups and straws and all kinds of stuff. So it felt ridiculous."

"To be fired for regular things that girls my age, they go to bachelorette parties and they do this," Cyrus added. "They go to Magic Mike shows. But, I was, at that time, I wasn't someone that was appropriate for kids, even though that was in my personal life."

In 2019, the "Flowers" singer shared a thread on X, formerly Twitter, in which she opened up about past behavior that came under scrutiny, including the penis cake.

"I got kicked off hotel Transylvania for buying Liam a penis cake for his birthday and licking it," she wrote at the time.

In the wake of her thread, a source for Sony, the studio behind Hotel Transylvania, claimed to to The Hollywood Reporter that the penis cake photos were the reason behind Cyrus' firing.

However, as Cyrus shared on Lewinsky's podcast, the most difficult year of her career came after the drama. She opened up about how it felt to navigate fame in 2013 after she says the world turned on her.

"My 2013 is your 1998, because that was the time that I got, just hit so hard. And I was so embarrassed," she recalled, comparing that fraught year in her life with Lewinsky's scandal in the White House.

She continued, "There was even a time where my brother and sister didn't want to go to school because of how humiliated they were to be related to me. I remember my brother even saying at one point, 'I don't judge you, but you could understand how hard it is for me to go to school and for you to be my sister."

The Hannah Montana alum said, during that time, she lost "everything" in her personal life as a result of the choices she was making professionally, with 2013 serving as one of Cyrus' most talked about years to date -- leaving the Disney channel, posing nude and releasing her controversial album, Bangerz.

As for what helped release some of the shame she had around both her personal and professional life at the time, Cyrus credited EDMR therapy -- which per the Cleveland Clinic stands for "Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It's a specific type of psychotherapy developed by Francine Shapiro that helps individuals heal from traumatic experiences and related symptoms like PTSD."

"It changed me," Cyrus gushed. "I feel like it kind of deleted the folder of my mind -- the guilt and shame folder. So, I haven't really dealt with that for probably about four years, but up until I did that EDMR, I had a lot guilt about how hard it would've been to be my sibling or my parent, and how embarrassing and all those things."

While things looked uncertain at that time, thanks to lots of therapy and growth, Cyrus said she's been able to heal, and she has her latest album, Something Beautiful, to thank for that.

"This album is really about healing," Cyrus maintained. "I've talked about it a lot -- this album has healed me me in many ways, but it really is about healing. And sometimes, that can be in the simplest or the deepest of ways."

Something Beautiful is out now.