take Us back

You HAD to Be There

- By Yana Grebenyuk

THE MOMENT:

With the Truly Typical Teen Lizzie McGuire, Disney Channel Gave Us a New BFF 25 Years Ago

While Nickelodeon launched star after star in the late '90s — Melissa Joan Hart (Clarissa Explains It All), Larisa Oleynik (The Secret World of Alex Mack), Amanda Bynes (The Amanda Show) — Disney Channel was playing catch-up. But on Jan. 12, 2001, it had a real contender thanks to a kind and kinda clumsy 13-year-old named Lizzie McGuire. As played by the equally appealing Hilary Duff, she charmed audiences, who related to her awkward adventures. “She really didn’t have a ‘spot.’ She wasn’t popular, and she wasn’t a dork,” Duff recalled of the character in 2018. “Girls needed someone like that to look up to. And that is really who I was at that time in my life, too.”

WHO WAS INVOLVED