Greater than two years after desires of a Lizzie McGuire revival have been dashed, Hulu’s How I Met Your Father is revisiting the enduring Disney Channel property through flashback.
Throughout Tuesday’s episode, appropriately titled “A Horrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Dangerous Valentine’s Day,” Sophie & Co. recount their worst Valentine’s Day experiences so as to cheer up Ellen. What follows are glimpses from the gang’s previous — all newly created aside from one. Quite than rent a teenage actress to play 13-year-old Sophie, the sequence cuts to a clip from Hilary Duff’s early-aughts sitcom.
“[The idea] got here from the author of the episode [Amy-Jo Perry], after which we in a short time acquired a temperature examine from Hilary through textual content, asking, ‘How do you’re feeling about this?’ And he or she was instantly sport,” sequence co-creator Elizabeth Berger tells TVLine. “Hilary thinks it’s humorous. She didn’t hesitate for one second. Then it was a matter of combing by way of episodes and being, like, ‘What’s an amazing, dramatic, angsty center faculty second?’”
They in the end settled on the Season 2 opener/Valentine’s Day episode “First Kiss” (streaming on Disney+; enroll right here), throughout which Lizzie experiences a sequence of firsts — her past love, her first kiss and, in fact, her first heartbreak — with paperboy Ronnie. However there was an uncomfortable second on the HIMYF desk learn the place it appeared like Duff was now not sport. “Within the script it mentioned ‘Younger Sophie,’ and she or he didn’t understand she was alleged to learn that line, the Lizzie McGuire line, stay on the desk learn,” fellow co-creator Isaac Aptaker recollects. “So, she simply sat there, and we thought, ‘Did she change her thoughts? Is she taking a stance that she doesn’t need to do it anymore?’ After which she went, ‘Wait, sorry! That’s me!’”
Provides Berger: “The folks within the room who didn’t know we had mentioned it with Hilary have been very nervous that she was stonewalling it, however that wasn’t the case in any respect.”
A Lizzie McGuire revival, with its authentic creator and most of its authentic solid returning, was initially greenlit by Disney+ in August 2019. However as manufacturing acquired underway, creator Terri Minsky departed over artistic variations, and manufacturing in the end shut down for good. Duff pleaded with Disney to maneuver the sequence to Hulu so as to precisely replicate Lizzie’s life as an grownup, however nothing ever got here of it. A yr later, Duff signed on to star in Hulu’s How I Met Your Father.
Together with Duff returning within the title position, it had additionally been confirmed (with photographic proof) that followers would’ve been reunited with Adam Lamberg as Gordo, Hallie Todd as Lizzie’s mother Jo, Robert Carradine as Lizzie’s dad Sam and Jake Thomas as Lizzie’s brother Matt. Per the official synopsis, the revival would have picked up “as Lizzie McGuire is nearly to show 30. She seemingly has all of it – her dream job as an assistant to a flowery New York Metropolis decorator, her dream man and a picturesque Brooklyn condo – however issues aren’t all the time as they appear. With a bit of assist from her associates, her loving household and her 13 year-old alter-ego in animated type, Lizzie navigates the ups and downs of maturity,” the logline learn — however alas, it wasn’t meant to be.
Requested in the event that they’re fearful the HIMYF flashback will lead to a barrage of tweets asking them to revive Lizzie, Aptaker laughed and answered, “Hilary will get these each single day. If we get a bit of style of it, that’s simply life!”
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