Christy Carlson Romano and Hilary Duff inCadet Kelly.Photo: Buena Vista/Kobal/Shutterstock
Hilary Duffis looking back at her filmCadet Kellywith new eyes.
TheHow I Met Your Fatherstar spoke toCosmopolitanabout her 2002 Disney Channel Original Movie after she was asked if she’d considered the film as “being queer-coded.”
Duff, 34, said, “I have to watch the movie again. No one has brought that to my attention except for Tien Tran on our show who plays Ellen.”
“She was like, ‘Oh my God. It is a moment in the queer community. All that close-talking with Jennifer,'” Duff said. “I didn’t know that. But if it helped anybody, I hope so.”
Cadet Kellyfollows Duff’s teenage Kelly Collins as she enrolls at a military school which her new stern stepfather Joe (Gary Cole) attended.
As Kelly adjusts to the strict and disciplined new environment, she comes head to head with her commanding officer Jennifer Stone (Christy Carlson Romano) as the two compete to make their school the best drill team in the state.
On January 7, Carlson Romano shared a TikTok video in which she mimed singing “I know something you don’t” over a screenshot of herself and Duff in the movie.
“Low key tho 🌈#greenscreen#iknowsomethingyoudont#fyp#foryou#lgbtq,” Carlson Romano wrote in the caption of the video.
In aSeptember episode on her YouTube Channel, Carlson Romano spoke about the film’s lasting impact on teenage girls.
“What I find interesting about the interpretation of the relationship between Cadet Kelly and Captain Stone is that there is a narrative that is in the culture right now that people are saying maybe they were in love, maybe there was an undercurrent of tension ebtween the two girls,” she said.
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“It really helped a lot of girls identify their sexuality,” she continued. “The military has traditionally been strict about that stuff and at the time that the movie came out we were not talking about that stuff. This character, Captain Stone, was the sexual awakening for a lot of the girls that felt that way at that age. I had a part in that! That’s crazy, I never even thought about that. I’m very flattered.”
source: people.com
