If you spent your early 2000s glued to Disney Channel, Hilary Duff just gave a major update on the question that has haunted our generation: Will the Lizzie McGuire reboot ever actually happen?
The answer is complicated, a little bittersweet, and honestly? Kind of perfect.
The 38-year-old Duff appeared on the March 9 episode of the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast and addressed the reboot question directly.
“I can say that, right now, it’s not in the cards,” she said, alluding to her busy schedule. “I have a world tour to go on and that’s going to take me a few years, I think.”
She hasn’t shut the door completely, though. Duff said she was always “really excited” to think about Lizzie in her 30s “and going through 30-year-old things,” but now she “can’t really see her at 40.”
Her alternative timeline? Much further out than anyone expected.
“Maybe I could start to see her around 55 (or) 60, and I think that’s interesting,” she added.
Quick math puts a potential return somewhere around 2042 at the earliest. That’s a long wait.
The Show That Shaped an Entire Generation
For anyone who needs one (though, let’s be real, you probably don’t): Lizzie McGuire ran for 65 episodes on Disney Channel from 2001 to 2004. It also spawned The Lizzie McGuire Movie, released in 2003.
The animated alter ego, the Rome trip fantasies, the feeling that someone on TV actually got what it was like to be an awkward kid trying to figure things out — the show had all of it.
After the original run, Disney wanted to transition the series into an ABC spinoff following Lizzie into high school. That fell through, becoming the first of what would turn into a frustrating pattern of almost-but-not-quite Lizzie revivals.
The biggest heartbreak came at the turn of the decade.
At the 2019 D23 Expo, it was revealed that Duff was in talks to reprise her role for a Disney+ show about Lizzie McGuire in her 30s, with original creator Terri Minski returning as showrunner.
Grown-up Lizzie navigating adulthood felt tailor-made for the generation that had aged right alongside the character.
Then? The series only lasted two episodes before being canceled in 2020.
Duff announced the cancellation in an Instagram post on Dec. 16, 2020. If you were online that day, you remember the collective disappointment. We were so close.
Hilary Duff Opens Up About Making Peace With Lizzie
Beyond the reboot talk, Duff has been remarkably candid lately about the emotional weight of being the person behind such an iconic childhood character.
During a March 3 appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, Duff revealed that it took a solid decade to “make peace” with her Lizzie McGuire character.
“It’s weird to play a character that people fall so in love with that doesn’t grow up. She stays that age and then I grew up,” she told Barrymore.
“But for a while, it was a hard thing to be changing and evolving, but everywhere I went I was this to people,” Duff said.
She went on to state that the end of her Lizzie era drove her toward music.
“I think that was why I wanted to be a pop star. The second I finished filming Lizzie, I was like, ‘Cool, I don’t want to be called that anymore,” she said.
Duff is ‘Obsessed’ With Lizzie McGuire
Here’s where the story turns into something genuinely sweet. After all those years of wrestling with the character’s shadow, Duff said she’s now “obsessed” with Lizzie.
“I get to join the fandom and be excited like everybody else, even though I was her,” Duff said.
After a decade of complicated feelings, Hilary Duff has landed on the same side of the screen as the rest of us — emotionally speaking, she’s a Lizzie McGuire fan now, too.
And she proved it during a would you rather round on Shetty’s podcast.
“Would you rather have to say, ‘Hi, I’m Hilary Duff and you’re watching Disney Channel,’ every time you introduce yourself or have the Lizzie McGuire animated character in your head at all times?” Shetty asked.
Her response was instant.
“Oh, she lives in there rent-free baby,” Duff replied.
“I think I would have her living — I mean, I’ve accepted her in my head, so I’m choosing the latter,” she added.
That little cartoon Lizzie — the one who used to pop up and say what real Lizzie was actually thinking — is still in there.
