Miley Cyrus is set to host Saturday Night Live this week, and viewers across the country will get a chance to see whether the young star will address her recent controversies and breakup with Liam Hemsworth.
The former Disney star has gone through quite a transformation in the past few years. She went from Hannah Montana to a budding pop star to a wild child, garnering headlines last month for a racy performance at the MTV Video Music Awards that had her grinding on singer Robin Thicke.
Miley followed up the performance with more controversy in her newest single “Wrecking Ball.” The video for the song shows a naked Miley Cyrus swinging on a wrecking ball and suggestively licking a sledgehammer. This week Miley was also featured in a series of near-naked and naked photographs.
And in the midst of all of this, Miley and fiance Liam Hemsworth went through a very public breakup, splitting on not the greatest of terms.
Miley has said the period is just part of her growing up, and some media experts say the wild phase may not do too much damage to Miley’s career.
“There is such a thing as bad publicity,” Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture of Syracuse University, told AFP. “Especially these child stars in their transition years, some of the publicity turns them from people who actually had promising careers to… objects of mockery.
“Lindsay Lohan really suffered that,” he said, while Miley is “well on that path… Whenever you hear Miley Cyrus mentioned in the last couple of weeks, it’s always been in a form of mockery, and often disdain.”
All of these incident build up to Miley’s highly anticipated Saturday Night Live appearance. In the past the show hasn’t shied away from the private lives of its hosts — Lindsay Lohan poked fun at her parting, as did Chris Farley just weeks before his death from a drug overdose.
Viewers can tune in to NBC at 11 pm EST or catch highlights here to see if Miley Cyrus goes the same route on Saturday Night Live .