Hilary Duff and Dakota Fanning on Songwriting, Nostalgia, and Not Giving a Fuck

Hilary Duff survived the noughties teen dream: the Disney machine, the arena tour grind, the US Weekly feeding frenzy. Since then, the former Lizzie McGuire star has kept busy with seven seasons as a millennial girlboss on Younger and four kids off-screen. Now she’s putting those experiences on the record with her comeback album, luck… or something, co-written with her husband Matthew Koma. As she tells her drinking buddy Dakota Fanning, it’s pop with perspective, made for the fans who’ve grown up with her, watching her normal-ish life from the sidelines.

———

TUESDAY 9:45 AM DECEMBER 16, 2025 LA

HILARY DUFF: [Laughs] Wow. This feels reckless.

DAKOTA FANNING: This is dangerous.

DUFF: It’s also 9:45 in the morning.

FANNING: [Laughs] I was going to say, the first time I heard some of these songs was when we stayed up til five in the morning. We’re not allowed to hang out anymore unsupervised.

DUFF: Right. We haven’t been left to our own devices since that night. It’ll happen again, it’s an annual occurrence.

FANNING: For sure. How are you?

DUFF: I’m okay. I had a lot of anxiety at 2:00am because making Christmas magical for kids and prepping a tour is a lot. But I’m okay.

FANNING: You haven’t had to do it with this many kids before. [Laughs]

DUFF: With any kids. I feel like a deadbeat, but I know I’m not.

FANNING: You’re not.

DUFF: I actually love kids and that’s why I had so many of them.

FANNING: Yeah.

DUFF: I’m also obsessed with leaving them and working, but the guilt is super thick.

FANNING: Are your kids listening to the album?

DUFF: They are. They know all the words. It’s really cute. I actually have to tell them my Dropbox isn’t working sometimes.

FANNING: Because you can’t listen to it anymore.

DUFF: Yeah. They’re like, “Can we listen to mommy’s songs?” I’m like, “Oh my god. That’s so sweet you’re not choosing Sabrina Carpenter.”

FANNING: [Laughs] Obviously you’re doing this for you and it’s so truly you, but it must also be so exciting to have them be a part of it and go to the shows.

DUFF: My son is 13 and I know he’s really proud of me because he actually tells me sometimes. But he might also be embarrassed because his friends might see something on the internet about me, nothing bad, but I just did this Dunkin’ Donuts thing and I’m assuming he’s probably like, “That’s my mom and that’s not very cool.” But the girls think I’m so cool.

FANNING: [Laughs]

DUFF: They’re like little cheerleaders. They’re so excited to watch me perform. Even though the subject matter’s not about my kids, because of who I am and how I process what I’ve gone through becoming a mother, they feel a part of this record even though I’m not singing about carpooling. [Laughs]

FANNING: Of course. I was getting ready the other night and I listened to it start to finish, and I just loved it so much. And knowing you—I think we should also tell the people how we became friends.

DUFF: Yes.

FANNING: We started taking tennis lessons together.

DUFF: Well, you were already an amazing tennis player.

FANNING: Please. I never became an amazing tennis player.

DUFF: You’re good at everything you do, Dakota. And then here comes me and Matt [Koma]—Matt and his short shorts and his long legs running around the court.

FANNING: Matt was probably the most improved out of all of us. [Laughs]

DUFF: That’s true. He had a rough start. My other favorite fact is that we would hang and play tennis with your mom.

FANNING: Yes. My mom is your and Matt’s biggest fan. Elle [Fanning] too. She was taking lessons also.

DUFF: It was a family affair.

FANNING: That leads me to Matt, because you worked on this together. I love that he’s a part of this with you because you can feel, in the first few minutes that you meet Matt, how much he loves you and thinks you’re the greatest thing that’s ever lived. So how was it, making this together?

DUFF: One, the comfort I feel, having that guy in my corner—it sounds so cheesy to say, but waking up every day and taking on the things in our world—we’re such a unit. Growing up in the industry, I felt like a lone rider for such a long time. That’s such a dorky word, but I was like, “I’m tough. I’ve got this.” It took me a really long time to accept how much he could take off of my plate.

FANNING: Totally.

DUFF: And then the fact that he’s insanely talented. I wasn’t interested in making a record with anyone else. I was like, “It has to just be me and you.” The most honest stuff came from that because he has a front row to my life and everything I’ve experienced, the really difficult times and the really easy good times that made me who I am. Everyone’s like, “How is it working with your husband? Do you guys fight a lot?” I’m like, “We literally never fight.”

FANNING: Yeah, you guys never really fight.

DUFF: Well, that’s not true. We have one drag-out fight once a year. He actually brought it up the other day. He was like, “We haven’t had a fight in such a long time.” I’m like, “Are you ready?”

FANNING: [Laughs] Are you ready?

DUFF: I’m not. Last time I threw his phone in a Bougainvillea bush and it felt so good. It was during the fires. We had been displaced, we had all the fucking kids, and we just needed to have it out. But we don’t usually fight, and making the record—I don’t speak this language. He makes music all day, every day since he was 15 years old. So I’m like, “That sound, what is that? Get that out of here.” [Laughs]

FANNING: He’s able to translate things.

DUFF: Yeah, he also knows my style and he’s got his pulse on the cool factor. He definitely elevates me and my taste beyond belief. Every time I’ve made a record, the A&R person would be like, “You need to work with this person, they have this hit right now. Let’s go to Sweden.” It was important we weren’t swinging for some hit. After 10, 15 years of not making a record, I wanted it to feel like a body of work for people who grew up listening to me and waited a really long time to hear from me. It feels really cohesive.

FANNING: Was it always the plan to do this when you were ready, or was there a time where you thought you would never make a record again?

DUFF: Music is not my natural state. I grew up an actor kid. I wanted to be a pop star and I did those things. But I had a child and I got divorced. I was trying to navigate all these things as a very young adult, and doing music felt too forward facing and too scary and exposed. So I was like, “Okay, I’ve got to learn how to be the best mom I can be.” I took some acting jobs, some really random poor choices, some great choices—like taking Younger, that changed my life.

FANNING: Yeah.

DUFF: But doing music on such a big scale as a young person, in arenas at a time when records sold, was just different. Ten years down the line, I was like, “Am I going to be playing in a small club? Is that okay?” I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have the safety and the confidence to execute it like I have now. I also wasn’t desperate to connect with people the way I am now. I feel this pull to share and be a part of people’s lives again.

FANNING: Totally.

DUFF: Even five years ago, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable to say some of the things I say on the record. You just get to a point of not giving a fuck. Of course, I want people to love it and I want it to be reviewed well. But at the end of the day, I’m going to come back to my four kids and my husband who I’m obsessed with, and we’re going to close the door.

FANNING: When “Mature” was released, you must have got a little taste of like, “Oh, this is going to go well.”

DUFF: Dakota, when we put the tickets on sale—

FANNING: And they sold out in, like, two seconds.

DUFF: And the waiting room queues were like, 175,000 people.

FANNING: That’s insane.

DUFF: I was like, “What’s happening?” People from the label were like, “Are you okay?” I honestly want to cry when I think about that many people showing up for me 25 years into my career. It’s beyond what my vision was. It also makes me really nervous. I’m like, “Oh wait, I have to be really good.” [Laughs]

FANNING: You will be. We have that in common. All these people come up to me and talk about Uptown Girls, for example. They’re like, “When I was young, that was my favorite movie.” It’s had this resurgence. You’re experiencing a version of that, meeting the people who loved you as a 14-year-old girl. Now they’re your age and getting to hear about what you’ve been through, and it probably makes them think about all they’ve been through.

DUFF: I also feel like I’ve lived a normal-ish life. There’s so much on the record where they’ll be like, “Me too, me too, me too.” Whether it’s about abandonment or anxiety or feeling insecure in your relationship or being cheated on or feeling like you don’t recognize yourself anymore in motherhood—that’s just what life is at this age. Going back and digging into some of my old songs, figuring out how to perform them now and what they mean to me at this stage in my life has been so fun. Sometimes it’s silly and I’m like, “What was I singing about when I was 14?” Because I actually connect more to it now.

FANNING: [Laughs]

DUFF: But back to the conversation about how we had similar upbringings. It used to be really hard for me to constantly hear that I was nostalgic for people.

FANNING: Yeah.

DUFF: It’s so funny because I look at you and I’m like, “You’ve always been a serious actress.” Uptown Girls is just the cute era.

FANNING: It’s interesting you say that because nostalgia doesn’t have any sort of negative connotation to me. It was always age-related, constantly feeling like everyone thought I was a kid over and over and over. Hearing that all the time when you’re trying to grow up, but also not trying to grow up too fast—that’s another cliché people have always said to me. “Don’t grow up too fast.” It’s like, “What is that?”

DUFF: Like, “What? I’m getting paid like an adult. I’m working adult hours.”

FANNING: [Laughs] “I can’t change it. There’s nothing I can do.” Now, at almost 32, I can confidently say I don’t feel that anymore. When people revisit things from when I was younger, I’m free to enjoy it the same way. I never wanted that to make me angry, so I don’t think I let it, but it was definitely something where I’m like, “I am 25 years old, not eight.” I would kind of have to grin and bear it and move on.

DUFF: Oh, I forgot you were eight.

FANNING: Oh, I was six. [Laughs]

DUFF: Six?

FANNING: I was six in I Am Sam.

DUFF: Oh my god. How do you feel now, having had a bomb ass career since you were six years old?

FANNING: I honestly feel nothing but gratitude and happiness. Obviously everyone goes through things that are challenging, and there are things you wish didn’t happen. But ultimately I’m really grateful I got to do what I was meant to do for my whole life.

DUFF: It’s very obvious when I watch you work that you’re doing exactly what you were meant to do.

FANNING: I feel that way, and the confidence and the self-esteem I’ve gotten from that, I really appreciate. Do you feel that doing something professionally from a young age gave you that, or no?

DUFF: Yes. I cannot imagine doing anything else, except for maybe interior design. [Laughs]

FANNING: Yeah. But you kind of do that a little bit, too.

DUFF: I do. I feel like I was meant to perform. I don’t always know in what capacity. Like, there’s days during rehearsal where I’m like, “What the fuck am I doing? Singing is so hard.” But that’s just having a job.

FANNING: Exactly.

DUFF: We’re not robots. It’s not like you can just be on every day. It’s like that in motherhood, too. So it’s taken getting to this age to be a little easier on myself, but I do feel like I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.

FANNING: That’s a good feeling. I have high standards for myself, but I’ve gotten to a point where I’m like, “Today’s not my day and that’s okay.” Growing up, and I’m sure you heard this a bunch too, people were always like, “You haven’t gone off the rails yet? Are you okay?” You’re like, “What? It’s almost like you’re willing me to go off the rails by continuing to ask me this.” And so you manage that by being like, “No one will ever see me make a mistake.” But now, I don’t carry that with me.

DUFF: I totally understand what you’re saying. We also both have parents from the South.

FANNING: One hundred percent.

DUFF: No matter what people would say to me, which would sometimes be massively inappropriate, I would just grin and bear it. It’s the Southern upbringing, which I appreciate, but it’s also been nice to grow up and be like, I can keep some of that but not destroy myself in the process.

FANNING: Yeah.

DUFF: Actually, there’s a lot of that in the title of the album, which is luck… or something. It has a lot of meaning behind it, but part of it happens to be that age-old question of, “How are you okay? How did you not go to jail?” How do you answer that? There’s no specific formula for “This is how I didn’t go crazy.”

FANNING: Well, I can suggest maybe stop asking people why they’re not crazy yet, because you’re probably driving people crazy.

DUFF: There’s always time for me to lose it.

FANNING: They might sing a different tune if they saw you and me at 4:30am.

DUFF: What were we thinking? [Laughs] I’ve only had one of those nights this year. How many have you had?

FANNING: That was one of those weird time warps where all of a sudden it was late.

DUFF: That was a very healing night for me, Dakota.

FANNING: Oh, good. I loved it too.

DUFF: I needed to drink way too much. I needed to cry, laugh, roll on the floor, dance on the table, do all the things, and we did all the things.

FANNING: We did it. I haven’t had too many of those nights. I mean, I’ve had a couple more than you, because I don’t have kids.

DUFF: Yeah. My friend was arriving from Canada the next day, and when my phone started ringing and the Uber came, I just went and laid on the sidewalk outside.

FANNING: Matt texted me and said, “You killed my wife.” [Laughs]

DUFF: He was like, “What did you do?” My kids came into the room and they were like, “Can we skip school today?” And I was like, “Uh-huh.”

FANNING: [Laughs]

DUFF: Like, “What? No, absolutely not. Don’t listen to mommy right now.” [Laughs]

FANNING: It was so good. You need that sometimes.

DUFF: All I did that next day was eat La Scala. That was the only thing I could figure out how to do.

FANNING: I had something to do the next day.

DUFF: I think you went to Pilates, you sick fuck.

FANNING: Oh, I did. That was so weird!

DUFF: It was 10:30 in the morning.

FANNING: I needed to prove to myself that I could still have a night like that and go to Pilates, because as you age, it gets harder and harder to have anything.

DUFF: I have to lift weights or I’m not a good person.

FANNING: I was doing that for a while.

DUFF: But at some point we will find a time to drink more wine.

FANNING: We will. And we’ll have no plans the next day. More horror dating stories for me.

DUFF: Oh, Dakota. Dating stories aren’t for Interview magazine, but they are for another time.

FANNING: I love you.

———

Hair: Ruby Howes using Oribe at Shotview Artists Management.

Makeup: Yasmin Istanbouli using Dior at The Wall Group.

Nail: Eri Ishizu using Dior Vernis at The Wall Group.

Prop Styling: James Rene at Jones Management.

Tailor: Caroline Trimble.

Photography Assistants: Byron Nickleberry and Chauncey Walker.

Fashion Assistant: Alex Rzyan.

Hair Assistant: Daria Solovyeva.

Prop Assistant: Ryan Elliott.

Production Director: Alexandra Weiss.

Photography Producer: Georgia Ford.

On-set Production: Eppy at Radish Films.

Production Assistant: Brooke Ramirez at Radish Films.

Production Interns: Ha Chu and Isaac James.

Post-production: Blythe Cross.

Social Media Assistant: Ashley Hood.

Location: Interwoven Studios.