What killed our Lizzie McGuire dreams? According to Hilary Duff, it was too much "love" for the titular character that halted the planned Disney+ revival in its tracks.
In an interview with SiriusXM's The Jess Cagle Show, the Younger star spoke about fighting to make the version of her Disney Channel sitcom Lizzie McGuire that made sense to her on the streaming platform—only for it to ultimately not work out.
"That's kind of been the battle," she explained. "Like I don't want to call it a battle cause everyone's on very like loving terms between, you know, me and Disney, but that that's been the thing. I think they're really trying to figure out what kind of content they want living on Disney+, and that doesn't totally align with, like, where I see Lizzie right now, you know, and I'm like very protective of her and they're very protective of her."
Hilary added that it was important for her that fans who grew up with Lizzie would be able to connect with the character as an adult woman, just as they did when she played the role as a teen.
"It only makes sense to me to shoot a show where she's acting like a 30-year-old in a modern world," said the actress.
A sequel series to Lizzie McGuire, which starred Hilary as the titular middle schooler whose private thoughts are expressed through an animated character, was announced in August 2019, with the original creator Terri Minsky at the helm. However, less than a year later in January 2020, Terri left the project over creative differences.
A Disney spokesperson said in a statement about the exit, "Fans have a sentimental attachment to Lizzie McGuire and high expectations for a new series. After filming two episodes, we concluded that we need to move in a different creative direction and are putting a new lens on the series."
In an interview with Variety, Terri explained that she and Disney simply weren't on the same page with the character.
"I am so proud of the two episodes we did. Hilary has a grasp of Lizzie McGuire at 30 that needs to be seen," she shared. "It's a wonderful thing to watch. I would love the show to exist, but ideally I would love it if it could be given that treatment of going to Hulu and doing the show that we were doing. That's the part where I am completely in the dark. It's important to me that this show was important to people. I felt like I wanted to do a show that was worthy of that kind of devotion."
In December 2020, Hilary broke fans hearts when she officially shared that the revival was no longer moving forward.
"I know the efforts and conversations have been everywhere trying to make a reboot work but, sadly & despite everyone's best efforts, it isn't going to happen," she wrote on Instagram at the time.
While the news was certainly disappointing, Hilary—who will next star in Hulu's How I Met Your Father, a spin-off of the long-running sitcom How I Met Your Mother—told The Jess Cagle Show that the experience of filming, even for a little while, was rewarding.
"It was lovely to relive that even for three weeks of my life, because, you know, there was a point in my life where I couldn't stand Lizzie McGuire," she explained. "And I was like, 'I don't want to hear that name ever again.' And now that I'm my age, I'm like, I love her. She's, you know, this is where it all began for me. She is me and I am her."