Hilary Duff to Star in Upcoming Hulu Series

Hilary Duff is taking on a new role in the “ugly” world of child pageants in her upcoming Hulu drama, Pretty Ugly. The How I Met Your Father actress will star in and executive produce the series based on Kirker Butler’s 2015 novel of the same name.

In the show, Duff plays Miranda Miller, a former teenage pageant queen who is determined to make her 10-year-old daughter, Bailey, the most successful child pageant contestant in the US. Bailey, however, wants nothing to do with her mother’s aspirations and is tired of pageants, which she has been participating in since she was just 3 months old.

Despite Bailey’s reluctance, Miranda is all in on her dreams of endorsement deals, beauty brands, and even a TV show. She’s even planning her unborn daughter’s future pageant career, all while pregnant herself.

Meanwhile, Miranda’s husband, Ray, who is a nurse with a penchant for taking random pills, finds himself in a tricky situation when the granddaughter of one of his hospice patients becomes pregnant. To add to the chaos, the patient’s widowed shut-in mother, Joan, is allegedly plotting a murder with Jesus. As the tagline suggests, “It’s all pretty ugly.”

The series is being penned by Butler, known for his work on Only Murders in the Building, Family Guy, and The Cleveland Show, along with director Silver Tree and Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment.

Duff first rose to fame as Lizzie McGuire on Disney Channel and went on to star in films like Cheaper by the Dozen and A Cinderella Story. She later returned to TV in Younger and produced and starred in Hulu’s How I Met Your Father in 2022.

In a previous interview with Cosmopolitan UK in 2020, Duff opened up about the challenges of breaking out of her Lizzie McGuire persona and how she has come to appreciate the role that kickstarted her career.