15-Year-Old Miley Cyrus Strikes Back at Criticism Over Her Alleged Romance With a 20-Year-Old, While Ryan Seacrest’s Unexpected Response Surfaces, Sparking Applause and Renewed Controversy! 

Back in 2008, Miley Cyrus — then 15 — was romantically linked to 20-year-old Justin Gaston, who was a contestant on the competitive reality show Nashville Star, which was hosted by Miley’s dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, among others.

While Justin denied being Miley’s boyfriend, the pair were pictured closely together numerous times, sometimes holding hands. Multiple sources claimed that the pair were an item and that they eventually split up in June 2009.

On one notable occasion, Miley discussed her apparent relationship with Justin on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show, after the host asked the Disney star about the speculation.

“I keep seeing you walking around with a guy that I think is too old for you,” Ryan told Miley, who retorted: “Well…I think you’re too old!” To this, Ryan replied, “I am too old! I guarantee you, I’m too old.”

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Ryan later asked Miley, “Are you going out with Justin?” to which she replied, “Why do you want to know? Do you have a crush on me?” Ryan said, “I can’t have a crush on you. I have a crush on your mother,” and Miley hit back, “Ew! Stop it!”

Ryan continued to ask Miley about the romance rumors, to which she said, “Maybe, maybe not.” Still, the host didn’t drop the subject. “Let’s just talk about rules,” he said. “You’re 15, gonna be 16 in a second. And this guy’s 20, right? So, are you allowed to date him? If you are?”

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Miley replied, “Yes. But I just think that right now everything is, like, really good. So I haven’t been really answering the question much because we’re just really happy with the way that everything’s worked out. And he’s really been a really great friend.”

Miley went on to describe Justin as a “really great Christian guy,” stating that they’d both been through similar hardships and had lots in common. “He’s gone through stuff, and I’ve gone through stuff… I think it’s really awesome that we kind of have that in common, that we can talk about it and we understand,” she said.

To this, Ryan replied, “You can bond on a level that’s probably unrelatable to a lot of people you hang out with.” Miley said, “Exactly.”

Miley also noted that she went into her and Justin’s “friendship” with an “open mind,” and chose not to “worry” about their age gap. “Our family is just like, you know, whatever happens, happens, and if he’s just nothing but a really good friend, that’s awesome,” she said.

Miley added, “It’s really hard for people who aren’t in the public eye to understand what it’s like to feel like so many people are judging you and people are gossiping about you at your school, they gossip about you all over the internet. It’s really hard for people to know what that’s like and I think it’s really cool that me and him have that relationship where we can talk about it because he gets it.”

Meanwhile, Ryan rounded things off by casually noting that Miley should get to age 18 before dating Justin.

This interview clip resurfaced online this week, with numerous Reddit users praising Ryan for showing genuine concern toward Miley. “Ryan was a real one for calling this out,” one popular comment read. “It seemed like Ryan was genuinely concerned,” someone else pointed out.

“The way he shut her down when she asked if he had a crush on her or something…” one user wrote, while another said, “Kudos to Ryan. Awkward but I do appreciate that he asked. That guy had no business dating Miley at that time. Wow.”

“I’m glad he said something,” someone echoed. “looking back it’s wild how normalized this kind of age gap was back then. Ryan deserves credit for at least questioning it on live TV instead of playing along,” someone else said.

“I loved how Ryan shut it down by saying he had a crush on her mom lol. You can tell he was genuinely concerned for her. It’s honestly really sad, you can tell she probably thought she was mature for her age and could do whatever she wanted since she was paying the bills, but at the end of the day, she was just a naive young girl,” one more comment read.