Hilary Duff has had a huge 2026. In addition to releasing her first new album in more than a decade, Luck… or Something, she hit the road for her first tour in more than two decades, the aptly named cozy Small Rooms, Big Nerves swing through London, Brooklyn, Toronto, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, followed by the Lucky Me world tour, which was just extended into next year.
Duff met Billboard‘s Delisa Shannon at Los Angeles’ Loose Cannon café for the latest edition of Takes Me Out, where the singer chatted up her Lucky Me Tour, talked about surprises in her setlist, what goes down her girls’ night out and revealed her secret pre-show rituals, including the all-important “pink bubble.” Watch the full interview above.
Shannon and Duff, 39, started off with a game of truth or drink, with the singer demurring on naming her bffs, but hinting that some are definitely a wilder time out than others. “I’m spicy, so my spicy nights [are] kind of evil,” she said, recalling an evening, pre-children, when a friend of hers who was getting played dirty by her boyfriend was on the receiving end of a drunk drive-by hot dogging of his house.
“That was pretty spicy,” she said of the prank she pulled in her late teens that also involved dumping out cans of tuna on the bad boyfriend’s lawn.
After a nearly two-decade break from the road Duff also described getting back out there earlier this year on her four-show Small Rooms, Big Nerves outing, saying the title of the tour came about so “earnestly. It was exactly the feeling. I felt so really scared, truly terrified,” she said. “It’s this weird feeling of being on a bicycle and knowing what to do but you’re like, ‘I maybe have a broken leg, I don’t know. if I can ride a bike right now.’”
On top of the nerves, Duff said she also had the stomach flu at the second date in Toronto on Jan. 24, but luckily she found a different gear and ended up having a great set. “It was really cool to be faced with those challenges that just happen on tour and being like, ‘OK, I can do this again. I’m strong. I’m powerful, I’m capable.’ And then just to find myself slowly,” she said.
That confidence came from the super fans who showed loud and proud, decked out in their best show wear and constantly boosting the singer’s confidence enough that she busted out the rarity “The Math” from her 2003 sophomore album, Metamorphosis. But when Shannon asked what song Duff would never add to the set list, instead of an answer the mother of four took a long swig of white wine, smiled and changed the subject.
After some delicious-looking tuna melts arrived at the neighborhood restaurant owned by Duff’s pals, the singer dug into her pre-show rituals, which she deemed kind of boring. When she finds a bathroom with good acoustics, Duff said she does her vocal warm-ups alone — “you sound like a dying cat” — as well as some deep squats, foot stomps and shoulder rolls before getting into her “pink bubble.”
“I don’t do it all the time before the show,” she said. “I talk to my angels before the show, but I pink bubble more in life for, like social things, or work things that I don’t know people at.” While Duff declined to name her favorite song to perform live, she was more than happy to call out Alanis Morissette as her dream collaborator. “I live for Alanis, she is my god and my guide,” said Duff, adding that she also went through a “huge” Morrissey phase and thinks that a team-up with the perpetually put-upon former Smiths singer would be cool, but will probably never happen.
The former Lizzie McGuire star didn’t hesitate one bit in naming the show she’d love to reboot, though: Are You Afraid of the Dark?, the Nickelodeon horror anthology from the early 1990s. “Wouldn’t that be sick?” she asked as self-described scaredy-cat Shannon said she could not deal with that, at all.
Duff will set for an exclusive conversation at the 2026 Billboard Live Music Summit, and, on the strength of her Lucky Me Tour, she will also receive Billboard’s Outstanding Pop Tour of the Year award at the event on Nov. 10 at 1 Hotel West Hollywood.
