Why Hilary Duff Doesn’t Talk About The Lizzie McGuire Reboot

Hilary Duff reveals why, despite public interest, she still hesitates to talk about the Lizzie Mcguire reboot. The Texas-born actress, now 34, rose to stardom overnight when, at age 13, she booked the titular role in Disney Channel’s comedy show Lizzie McGuire. Since the show’s end, Duff has created an impressive career for herself that extends beyond the emblem of her Disney-darling persona, perhaps most notably with a lead role in the 2015 show Younger, and most recently in the show How I Met Your Father, a spinoff show of the famous sitcom How I Met Your Mother.

Still, many know Duff best as the sweet, fashionable, and adorably awkward teenager from their own youth, Lizzie. The Disney show Lizzie McGuire first aired in 2001 and ran till 2004, but in this relatively short period of time accumulated a level of success that rendered it the stuff of Disney legend. The show, particularly the iconically funky and colorful fashion, epitomized the culture of Y2K and still lingers in the minds of millennials who grew up with Lizzie as an object of peak nostalgia to this day. Such a legacy explains why Disney+ developed a reboot of the show, conceiving the premise of checking in with grown-up Lizzie. To fans’ ecstatic delight, many members of the cast including Duff herself appeared to be on board. Important artistic differences between Disney and Duff, however, heartbreakingly halted any further development of the show.

While in conversation with Lindsay Peoples Wagner on The Cut‘s podcast “In Her Shoes”,  Hilary Duff candidly discusses Lizzie McGuire and the ill-fated reboot in a fair amount of depth, but also frankly admits that she hesitates to talk about the show at all due to the explosive reactions on the internet that inevitably follow. Duff also expresses a touching reverence for Lizzie’s impact on television culture and her amazement at the passion of fans so many years after its original run. Check out her comments below:

“I don’t love to talk about this, because the internet seems to explode whenever ‘Lizzie’ stuff is brought up. I think there’s always a possibility there. And even if she’s 40, I don’t think people care. It’s always going to be somewhat interesting to people to see where she ended up.”

Ironically, Duff for a while resented the shadow of the character and worked hard to cease any public association of her with Lizzie McGuire. Duff says, however, that she recently adopted an appreciative perspective that left her incredibly protective of Lizzie– so protective that she refuses to participate in a reboot that doesn’t portray the character authentically and in a way that would honor the character’s legacy. Disney+, after all, wanted a squeaky clean reboot that would require the omission of any explicit content, and such censoring of Lizzie, who would now be in her 30’s, hinders an honest portrayal of her growth and depiction of her everyday life and relationships as an adult woman.

As Duff clearly understands, the charm and lasting impact of Lizzie McGuire lies in its relatability and in how Lizzie serves as an honest and unabashed reflection of the intoxicating ups and down, awkward moments, and vulnerability of being a teenager. Duff’s refusal to participate in a Disney+ reboot that doesn’t share these same nuanced qualities in the context of Lizzie’s adulthood speaks to not only her respect for the character’s legacy but also her respect for the millions of fans that absolutely deserve a reboot that possesses the same smart and candid qualities that made them fall in love with Lizzie in the first place. While the sometimes volatile reactions of Lizzie Mcguire internet fanatics leave Duff understandably wary to discuss the show, her clear love for the role and its continued cultural influence should reassure viewers that when she wants to talk about Lizzie McGuire, she absolutely will – and especially with her confirmation of the remaining possibility of a reboot, the world will surely listen.

Source: The Cut