Hilary Duff to Star in New Hulu Series

Hilary Duff will step inside the “ugly” world of child pageants in her new Hulu drama, Pretty Ugly.

The How I Met Your Father actress is set to star in and executive produce the new series, based on Kirker Butler’s 2015 novel of the same name, Deadline reported Thursday.

Duff will play Miranda Miller, a former teenage pageant queen whose mission in life is to make her 10-year-old daughter Bailey “the most successful child pageant contestant in the United States.” Bailey, however, wants no part of her mother’s dreams and is “burned out” on pageants, which she’s been doing since she was 3 months old.

Despite Bailey’s feelings, Miranda is dreaming of endorsement deals, beauty brands — even a TV show. In fact, at seven months pregnant, she’s “already mapping out her unborn daughter’s future pageant career” in hopes of building her empire.

Meanwhile, Miranda’s husband, Ray, “a nurse with a hobby of taking random pills,” has gotten the 18-year-old granddaughter of one of his hospice patients pregnant, and her mother, Joan, a widowed shut-in, is “plotting a murder with Jesus.” As the tagline teases, “It’s all pretty ugly.”

Butler, whose credits include Only Murders in the Building, Family Guy, The Cleveland Show and The Neighbors, will write the series alongside director Silver Tree and Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment.

Duff, who first stepped into the spotlight as the titular character on Disney Channel’s Lizzie McGuire, went on to star on the big screen in the Cheaper by the Dozen franchise in addition to A Cinderella Story and The Lizzie McGuire Movie. Duff returned to TV in 2015 for the dramedy Younger and then went on to produce and star in Hulu’s How I Met Your Father in 2022.

Duff previously revealed to Cosmopolitan UK in 2020 that she struggled to break out of the role as Lizzie McGuire as a young actress, telling the publication at the time, “I definitely went through big frustrations of being like, ‘Why can I not get a shot at being someone else?’”

“From age 21 to 25, before I became a mom, there was a lot of frustration,” she continued. “I would get to producer callback and they’d be like, ‘She’s so great and she gave us the best reading and blah blah blah, but she’s Hilary Duff…’”

Now, however, Duff looks at the iconic teen role differently. “It just doesn’t annoy me anymore when people refer to me as Lizzie McGuire or say that was my biggest role, because it paved the way for all the other roads I’ve been able to take,” she said.