Hilary Duff has signed on to headline a new Hulu comedy series titled Pretty Ugly.
The project, adapted from Kirker Butler’s 2015 novel, is being developed with director Silver Tree, 20th Television, and Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment attached. Butler is also set to pen the adaptation.
Duff will take on the role of Miranda Miller, a mother determined to turn her 10-year-old daughter, Bailey, into the nation’s top child beauty pageant star.
According to the show’s description, Miranda is a former pageant star who still dreams big—hoping her daughter’s success might lead to brand deals, beauty contracts, or even a reality series. The problem? Bailey has been competing since infancy and is completely over it. Miranda, however, refuses to slow down. Now seven months pregnant, she’s already planning a future in pageants for her unborn child.
While Miranda is focused on building her empire, chaos brews at home. Her husband, Ray—a nurse with a pill problem—ends up in a scandalous affair with the teenage granddaughter of one of his patients. Meanwhile, Miranda’s widowed mother, Joan, retreats into isolation and begins plotting a murder with Jesus as her unlikely co-conspirator. The tagline sums it up: It’s all pretty ugly.
Hilary Duff’s career spans from her breakout as Lizzie McGuire on Disney Channel to major teen hits like Cheaper by the Dozen, A Cinderella Story, and Agent Cody Banks. More recently, she starred as Kelsey Peters in Younger and led Hulu’s How I Met Your Father as Sophie Tompkins, where she also served as a producer.
