Frankie Muniz Hasn’t Spoken To Hilary Duff Since 2003 ‘Cos Of BTS Drama Involving Her Mum
Frankie Muniz is stepping back into the spotlight, returning as Malcolm in a Disney+ revival of the early 2000s classic Malcolm in the Middle. In doing so, he’s spilling some old school Disney tea, including why his friendship with co-star and former friend Hilary Duff went awry.
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As you’ll remember, Frankie starred alongside Hilary in Agent Cody Banks, and according to the former child star, he hasn’t spoken to the pop star since the last day of filming, and there’s a reason why: her mum.
“I was on the set of Lizzie McGuire, and I was in Hilary’s dressing room and her mum was there, and her mum was, I’m gonna say, the epitome of a stage mom, momager. She was intense,” Muniz began to explain on The Joe Vulpis Podcast.
“I’ve actually never told this story, and I might get in trouble for it but I don’t care, I’m 40,” Muniz continued.
“So her mum was like ‘Do you know what you’re doing this summer? What are you doing this summer?’ and I go ‘Oh I’m filming this movie where I’m playing, like, a junior James Bond. It’s called Agent Cody Banks‘, and she’s like ‘Is there a girl [part], that would be good for Hilary?’ and I was like ‘Yeah’, I go ‘but I don’t know, you know?’
“Meanwhile, I knew in my contract I had a say of who the girl was gonna be. But I didn’t say that to her.”
The actor spilled that Smallville star Kristin Kreuk (nope, not the NXIVM sex cult ‘master’ — that’s Allison Mack) was actually the frontrunner for the role back then, and he’d already been imagining her as his on-screen partner. But what seemed like a harmless convo with Hilary Duff’s mum ended up sparking some unexpected drama between him and his friend.
Muniz continued, “The next morning, I show up to the set, I go into her dressing room to hang out, and her mum is like ‘Guess what? We’re going to be spending the summer together!’ and I’m like ‘What do you mean?’
“She was like ‘We’re going to be up in Vancouver together!’ and I’m like ‘Oh, what’s Hilary filming?’ like ‘Is she gonna be filming a movie up there too? That’s awesome! We’ll get to hang out, we’ll have dinners’, you know what I mean?
“‘No, she’s doing Cody Banks with you!’ and I looked at her and I went: ‘No she’s not?’ and she’s like, ‘No, yeah, yeah, she is. They signed the contract last night!’”
Muniz admitted he was totally gobsmacked that Duff’s mum managed to pull all that together overnight — especially since she hadn’t even heard about the movie until he mentioned it the day before.
“So I call my agents and I’m like ‘Hey, I’m just wondering…’ I wasn’t mad, it was just, like, shocking,” Muniz explained.
“Because I have a say, I’m like ‘They didn’t ask me!’ But, supposedly, calls were made, and they knew that Hilary and I were really close and I was filming her show, so they just assumed it was fine. So, needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled about it.”
Although Muniz insisted he had no hard feelings toward Duff herself, he said he felt pretty betrayed by her mum and the studio for cutting a deal behind his back — and that ended up driving a wedge between him and Duff.
“They came to Vancouver and I was very sad when Hilary’s mum would come on set,” he continued. “I’m being honest, you know what I mean? I’m old enough to where I realise I don’t mind people knowing the truth. And if I’ve told you, I’ve never talked to Hilary since the last day of filming. I have not said one word to her since then.”
Muniz later admitted he regrets letting Duff’s mum come between them and mess with their relationship.
“I look back at it now and I go ‘What a dumb [situation]’,” he continued.
“I regret not just continuing to be friends with her, ‘cos we were friends, we had a great friendship for such a long time and I let her mom [get in the way]… like, it pissed me off,” Muniz said.
Interestingly, this isn’t the first time Hilary Duff’s mum has been accused of meddling in her daughter’s career, and the career of the child stars around her.
In the early 2000s, actress Lalaine — who played the role of Miranda, Hilary’s character’s best friend in Lizzie McGuire — abruptly left the show for unknown reasons, known by many millennials as the genesis of our abandonment issues.
Then, in the 2024 book Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel’s Tween Empire, it was finally revealed that Lalaine was ousted as a result of beef between her and Hilary, and whataya know? Hilary’s meddling mum was involved!
According to a writer on Lizzie McGuire who was interviewed for the book, Hilary and her mum were furious when they found out Lalaine would be singing “Reflection” from Disney’s Mulan in an episode of the kid’s show.
“Hilary and her mum were very upset by that because their long-term plan was for Hilary to sing,” Tim Maile, who co-wrote the episode, revealed. “And, in the overall scheme of Lizzie, Lalaine was the one who got to sing first.”
The book claims that Duff — who was flat-out busy and couldn’t hang with the cast as much — started feeling a bit insecure about how close Lalaine seemed with everyone else on set.
“There were a lot of emotional politics that were just unfortunate,” Rogow says. “It was a mess.”
During filming in 2002, Hilary and Lalaine had what was described as “a falling-out beyond repair”.
Rogow recalls that the actors’ friendship “fractured all the way up to the parents”.
“There were two camps: ‘We don’t want to work with her’, and ‘We don’t want to work with her’,” he explained in the book. “It was like, oh my God, this is a nightmare. We couldn’t solve it.”
Lalaine was subsequently released from her contract and by all accounts, the tension remains to this day, with Lalaine being noticeably absent from the ill-fated Lizzie McGuire reboot.
As for Frankie Muniz, the actor said he’s open to reconnecting with Hilary, who is on the heels of releasing new music.
“I would love to catch up with her. I would love to even talk about that, ‘cos I’m sure she doesn’t know any of that happened,” he concluded.
Agent Cody Banks Part 3, anyone? Sans Hilary’s mum?
The post Frankie Muniz Hasn’t Spoken To Hilary Duff Since 2003 ‘Cos Of BTS Drama Involving Her Mum appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
