Hilary Duff will star in a drama series in development at Hulu titled “Pretty Ugly.”
The show is based on Kirker Butler’s 2015 novel of the same name, and it hails from director Silver Tree, 20th Television and Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment. Butler will also write the series.
Duff will play Miranda Miller, a mother whose mission in life is to make her 10-year-old daughter Bailey the most successful child pageant contestant in America.
“A former teenage pageant queen herself, Miranda dreams of endorsement deals, beauty brands, maybe even a TV show,” reads the logline. “Bailey, however, wants none of it. She’s been doing pageants since she was three months old and is burned out. But Miranda can’t imagine slowing down. In fact, she’s seven months pregnant and already mapping out her unborn daughter’s future pageant career.”
Meanwhile, while Miranda busies herself with building a pageant empire, her husband Ray, a pill-popping nurse, has knocked up the 18-year-old granddaughter of one of his hospice patients. And her mother Joan, a widowed shut-in, is plotting a murder with Jesus. Per the tagline: “It’s all pretty ugly.”
Duff is best known for her lead role in the Disney Channel comedy series “Lizzie McGuire,” which also spawned a 2003 movie. As a teen actor, she also appeared in the Steve Martin “Cheaper by the Dozen” movies, “A Cinderella Story” and “Agent Cody Banks.” Recently, Duff starred as Kelsey Peters in TV Land’s dramedy “Younger,” and she produced and starred as Sophie Tompkins in Hulu’s “How I Met Your Father.”
Butler is an Emmy-nominated writer and producer whose credits include “Only Murders in the Building,” “Family Guy,” “The Cleveland Show” and “The Neighbors.”
Deadline broke the news.