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Hilary Duff Says There Was a Point In Her Life When She "Couldn't Stand Lizzie McGuire"

hilary duff
hilary duff

James Devaney / Contributor, Getty Images

We'll likely never end our mourning for what could have been the best revival of a series ever: Lizzie McGuire 2.0. The reboot was canned after filming just two episodes due to conflicting views of how the title character, played by Hilary Duff, should be portrayed as a 30-something living in New York City. But during a May 6th appearance on SiriusXM's The Jess Cagle Show, Duff said that though she's sad about the revival's death, she's happy to have briefly played Lizzie again having come to appreciate the character more in her adulthood.

"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," Duff told host Jess Cagle, per Entertainment Tonight. "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," Duff added. "And she is me and I am her. And I brought what I could to that, which was very much just who I am inside. And so to tap into that again, even for a moment was really a great experience."

As Duff explained earlier this year, a creative conflict is to blame for Disney ending the Lizzie McGuire reboot. The plan was for the show to air on the company's streaming platform Disney+, but Duff said the list of content guidelines Disney has for their streaming site "doesn't totally align with like, where I see Lizzie right now." She told Cagle, "I'm very protective of her and they're very protective of her."

"But the one thing for me was just the way that she could connect with what was going on in people that were watching the show," Duff continued, noting that Lizzie being relatable to other 30-year-olds was key for her. "And so for me, it only makes sense to me to shoot a show where she's acting like a 30-year-old in a modern world. And there was a lot of creative discussions where maybe they were thinking that's not quite right, and we were trying to make it work."

So, for now, at least, the Lizzie McGuire reboot of our dreams has been put on hold indefinitely. In the meantime, we'll happily watch Duff in her new leading role on the How I Met Your Mother Hulu spinoff series, How I Met Your Father, which is about to enter production.