It turns out that Chad Michael Murray was unaware of the teen frenzy that he unleashed by inviting Hilary Duff to her frenemy Lindsay Lohan’s Freaky Friday premiere.
“I didn’t know there was a feud,” Murray, 44, said during a Wednesday, March 25, interview with Virgin Radio Toronto. “How was I supposed to know there was a feud? I found out quickly after.”
Duff, 38, confirmed on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast last month that she “crashed” the August 2003 premiere of Murray and Lohan’s Freaky Friday premiere despite the women’s then-infamous drama.
“Chad Michael Murray invited, why? I don’t want to start any more stuff, but he was, like, ‘You should come with me,’” Duff recalled on the February episode. “I was, like, ‘Mhm, probably I should.”
Murray and Duff had been filming A Cinderella Story ahead of the Freaky Friday red carpet. (Murray, of course, played the love interest of both ladies in the two films.)
“[Hilary and I] were filming, and we had a big kissing sequence,” Murray recalled on Wednesday. “They wanted our characters to get to know each other and they’re, like, ‘You guys need to hang out, get to know each other. We don’t need people clamming up.’”
He added, “We started spending time together, it was great [and] super sweet.”
According to Murray, he invited Duff to the red carpet premiere since they had no additional “free time” to connect between film takes.
“By the way, I didn’t understand that there was drama or that would even cause a thing,” he admitted. “Like, nowadays, I can understand that we’re so kind of in the know with social media, it’d be an obvious [thing, but] back then, it wasn’t obvious that it was a thing. I just thought two people are going to go hang out, cool, it’s awesome. It wasn’t anything that kept me up at night.”
Duff and Lohan, 39, sparked a feud after they both dated Aaron Carter in the early 2000s.
“I was dating [Hilary] for like a year and a half, and then I just got a little bored, so I went and started getting to know Lindsay, dating Lindsay,” Carter, who died in 2022, said on The Big Idea With Donny Deutsch in 2005. “Then I didn’t want to do that anymore, so I got back with Hilary.”
While speaking on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, Duff acknowledged the relationship overlap.
“This is where all this stuff started. There was no social media to be like, who was dating who?” Duff recalled. “You just take people’s word for it and then people get mad at you. I mean if you’re, like, Lindsay Lohan or me, he’s, like, probably dating both of us, like, you know what I mean?”
Duff further revealed that she and Lohan squashed any bad blood years later.
“Lindsay came up to me at a club once and was like, ‘Are we good?’” Duff said. “I was like, ‘We’re good.’ She was like, ‘Let’s take a shot.’ I’m like, ‘OK.’ It was amazing.”
Duff is now married to Matthew Koma, while Lohan found love with husband Bader Shammas. Murray, for his part, tied the knot with Sarah Roemer in 2015.
