Hilary Duff Is Fully In The Driver's Seat

It's a freezing Tuesday in January, and Hilary Duff is on stage at the Brooklyn Paramount, but you could barely hear the music. More than 2,500 superfans are going wild because they're witnessing the infamous "With Love" dance in real time; the "go girl, give us nothing" routine that blew up on TikTok for its adorably lackluster energy. You'd never know that when a minidress-clad Duff performed the routine on the Today show in 2007—and a handful of times before and after—she was doing so as an embarrassed teenager.

"That has not been a fun thing to follow me around," she tells me a week later in Los Angeles. When she watches the past footage of that dance, she doesn't see a 19-year-old attempting a fairly uninspired routine, but recognizes a time when every movement—not just choreo—felt outside of her control.

"[I] didn't want to be there, doing this dance that I probably didn't want to be doing, and didn't feel good at the time," she says. "I know people don't look at it like that, and it's this funny thing, but that's how I used to look at it."

In late 2025, Duff's fans were beside themselves when she announced that on February 20, she'd be releasing a new album, luck… or something, , her first since 2015's Breathe In. Breathe Out . Last month she teased it with four intimate live shows—including the Brooklyn one I attended—and revealed that she'd be launching a world tour, Lucky Me, in 2026. And before you ask: Yes, the set lists will include crowd-pleasers from her 2003 album Metamorphosis and her self-titled 2004 album, as well as several from what she calls her "dancey era," encompassing singles like "With Love" and (the criminally underrated) "Sparks."

Sitting across from me now at the Los Angeles studio where she recorded luck… or something , Duff still exudes that mix of ineffable cool and relatability that helped turn her into a generational icon. She's wearing a green leather Cult Gaia top and pants set and her blonde waves look effortless in the way you hope you might be able to master with a Dyson Airwrap. A sprinkling of minimalist tattoos covers her arms.