Why Miley Cyrus Let Her Homeless Friend Accept Biggest Award at MTV VMAs

Kristina Skorbach
8/25/2014
Updated:
8/25/2014

While talking with reporters on the red carpet, singer Miley Cyrus admitted that she was nervous prior to the MTV Video Music Awards show, unlike her companion, former homeless friend Jesse, a 22-year-old male who she called in some of her Instagram captions “my favorite dude ever.”

Cyrus said that Jesse is the one who is calm, cool, and collected. 

“Just the screaming... it’s only the carpet that really makes me nervous,” Cyrus said. The reporter, Miley’s sister Brandi Cyrus who does entertainment coverage for SpinMedia, went on to remind her younger sister that last year the singer stole the show with her infamous ’twerking' act alongside Robin Thicke.

“We'll see what happens tonight. I hope we do the same thing but in a different platform, and with a different message,” Cyrus said.

Cyrus invited Jesse to deliver an important message and even sent him up to the stage to pick up the biggest award of the night for “Video of the Year.”

“I kept explaining to people that I didn’t understand my power until last year, and now I understand how many people listen when I speak,” she said.

Jesse went up on the stage, paper in hand, to accept the award. Here is what he had to say:  

“Thank you all. My name is Jesse and I’m accepting this award on behalf of the 1.6 million runaways and homeless youth in the United States, who are starving, lost, and scared for their lives right now. I know this because I’m one of those people. I’ve survived in shelters all over the city, I’ve cleaned your hotel rooms, I’ve been an extra in your movies, I’ve been an extra in your life. Though I may have been invisible to you on the streets, I have a lot of the same dreams that brought many of you here tonight. Los Angeles entertainment capital has the largest population of homeless youth in America, and the music industry will make over $7 billion this year and outside these doors are 54, 000 human beings who have no place to call home. If you want to make a powerful change in the world right now, please join us and go to Miley’s Facebook page. A dream you dream alone is only a dream, but a dream you dream together is reality. Thank you so much for your time.”