Hilary Duff reveals new details about the story for Disney’s aborted Lizzie McGuire reboot. It was the announcement dreams were made of: In 2019, Disney announced Duff would be returning to her breakout role of Lizzie McGuire for a new series made exclusively for Disney+. The show was expected to follow the adventures of a 30-something Lizzie in New York City. Duff’s co-stars Adam Lamberg, Jake Thomas, Hallie Todd, and Robert Carradine were all slated to return for Lizzie McGuire, along with the show’s original creator Terri Minsky. Production began in late 2019, and Lizzie McGuire was promoted among Disney+’s 2020 offerings.
However, it was in January of that year that Minsky announced she would be parting ways with the reboot. About a month later, both Minsky and Duff shared their hopes that Lizzie McGuire would be transferred to Hulu, which would allow the series to explore more mature content. Fans were optimistic about this change as well, but few updates emerged in the following months. Finally, in December 2020, Duff announced on social media that Lizzie McGuire wouldn’t be returning. Duff alluded to the creative differences that prevented the show from moving forward, writing that she wanted a reboot that would be “honest and authentic to who Lizzie would be today.”
With the debut of her new show How I Met Your Father, Duff has opened up a bit more about Lizzie McGuire in recent days. In an interview with Cosmopolitan, the actress shared some new details about where the reboot would’ve found Lizzie. As had been previously revealed, Lizzie would’ve been involved with a guy at the time of the show’s first episode. However, according to Duff, that wasn’t going to last very long. She said:
My character was moving back home with her parents because she caught her soon-to-be fiancé cheating on her, and she was falling flat on her face at the moment and being like, “I need to pivot because everything that I thought was wasn’t, and I’m turning 30. What the fuck?”
Falling on her face is a familiar position for Lizzie to be in, so perhaps some things never do change. The concept of a person in their 30s needing to start all over isn’t a new one, yet there’s a certain novelty in seeing Disney Channel heroine Lizzie go through with it. For the many viewers who grew up with her, it would’ve been special to see Lizzie rediscover herself in a way many people of the same age likely do. The opportunity to revisit a childhood favorite in early adulthood holds a certain appeal, and one can see how Duff hoped the Lizzie McGuire reboot would’ve explored more mature topics through that basic premise.
In 2020, Duff seemed to close the door on Lizzie McGuire for good. However, her tune changed a bit in another recent interview, when she said of the Lizzie McGuire reboot, “I don’t think it’s dead, and I don’t think it’s alive.” Duff expressed some hope that it could be revived in the future, though now she’s busy with How I Met Your Father. It’s clear she still has a lot of passion for the story the reboot could’ve told, and one just has to hope she’ll get the chance to actually tell it someday.
