With the arrival of Hilary Duff's new sitcom, How I Met Your Father, on Hulu, her fans can't help but remember the show that almost was. Though a few years have passed, fans are still mourning the Lizzie McGuire reboot that was scrapped after filming two episodes. While chatting with Cosmopolitan, Duff revealed what the main storyline for the show would've been, as well as her disappointment that the series will never see the light of day.

When asked if she ever thought about leaking footage from those two episodes, Duff gave a candid answer. "I would be lying if I didn't say I didn't have those thoughts a few times," she admitted. "But I wouldn't because in my 34 years I've realized that everything does happen for a reason. There's a time and a place for everything. It just wasn't her moment."

Despite the production being dropped by Disney, Duff said she's "constantly" asked about it by devoted fans. "All it does is breathe life into the fact that people still want it, and that's really sweet," she said, going on to describe the reboot as: "It's not dead, and it's not alive."

The show was canceled over creative differences between Disney, Duff, and showrunner Terri Minsky. Duff and Minsky wanted to portray a realistic life of a 30-year-old woman living in New York City, while Disney was looking for something that appealed to a younger demographic.

"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?'" Duff revealed.

These sentiments echo comments Duff made last year, as well. "I think they are 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," she said of the different creative visions for the series. "I’m very protective of her and they’re very protective of her."

Despite the reboot not working out how she imagined, Duff still treasures her experience working on those two episodes, especially the time she got to spend with her co-stars from the original series. "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 recalled. "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.'"

"This is where it all began for me. And she is me and I am her," she added. "And I brought what I could to that, which was very much just who I am inside. So to tap into that again, even for a moment, was really a great experience."

Becky Mits

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