The Lizzie McGuire Cast Responds to the Reboot’s Cancellation: ‘It Just Seems Ridiculous’

We're still bummed that the Lizzie McGuire revival never happened—and so is the cast. In a new interview with Vice, in honor of the 20th anniversary of the show's premiere, we got a little bit more info on what went down and why the reboot cancellation was so unexpected. 

“When we did the read-through of the first two scripts, there were literally three rows of chairs and in each chair was some kind of a Disney executive,” Robert Carradine, who played Lizzie's dad, said in the Vice interview published on January 12. “I mean, there were 25 of them in there. And they were laughing their asses off.” 

He said the cancellation was a huge surprise, asserting, “Every single step of that trajectory had to be green-lit by somebody who's high up in the organization. So, you go to all that trouble and they decide at the last minute, out of the blue, that it needs to be more kid-friendly? I don't get that.”

Hallie Todd, who played the McGuire matriarch, agreed, calling the whole thing “ridiculous.” 

“I'm sad. We had the best time when we got together for those two episodes. It felt like no time had passed, except that all of a sudden these kids were adults,” Todd said. “It just seems ridiculous. There's always more to it than you hear, and I certainly am not privy to those conversations in the back room.”

As previously reported, the central issue surrounding the reboot was, apparently, whether or not to depict a grown-up Lizzie McGuire realistically—as an adult who does adult activities or, instead, as just a taller version of her tween-age self. 

Prior to the announcement that Disney had canceled the reboot, the show's star, Hillary Duff, spoke out on Instagram about making her character “authentic” and attempted to get the series moved to Hulu—which is owned by Disney—after a similar switch reportedly occurred with Love, Victor.  

“I’d be doing a disservice to everyone by limiting the realities of a 30-year-old’s journey to live under the ceiling of a PG rating,” Duff wrote on Instagram in February 2020. “It’s important to me that just as [Lizzie’s] experiences as a preteen/teenager navigating life were authentic, her next chapters are equally as real and relatable.” 

Then, on December 16, Duff announced that Disney had officially axed the Lizzie McGuire reboot. She reiterated, “I want any reboot of Lizzie to be honest and authentic to who Lizzie would be today. It's what the character deserves.”

Originally Appeared on Glamour