Andrea Lewis Calls Working with Hilary Duff on “Cadet Kelly” 'One of My Most Fun Shoots' (Exclusive)

The actress and producer starred in the Disney Channel Original Movie just before beginning her recurring role on 'Degrassi: The Next Generation'

Before appearing as Hazel Aden on Canada’s teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation, Andrea Lewis starred alongside Hilary Duff in the Disney Channel Original Movie, Cadet Kelly.

As a self-proclaimed “Disney kid” with several years of experience under her belt, Lewis remembers feeling “very excited” to book the job — though admits she wasn’t fully sure what the project was at first.

“I loved Disney Channel, loved Even Stevens, loved Lizzie McGuire … I was a [The] Famous Jett Jackson fanatic. I loved the content,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively. “So when the movie came in — and I guess this is me revealing something about myself — because I was an actor as a kid, I would more so look at the basics. It was like, ‘Oh, movie or series,’ and you'd be like, ‘Oh, yay, okay.’ "

She added, “And then you'd be like, ‘Do I like this character at all?’ [I] liked the character, thought she was fun, but like I said, I didn't process what it was, who was in it, nothing of the sort.”

It wasn't until the read through, when Duff and Christy Carlson Romano walked in, that Lewis, now 38, realized her costars would be two actresses from two of the shows she loved.

At that point she remembers thinking: “‘Oh, this is kind of a big deal,’ or, ‘This is going to be a big deal, hopefully.’”

When looking back at her time making the 2002 film — which follows Kelly Collins (Duff) as she enrolls in military school, where she befriends Carla (Lewis) and goes head-to-head with her commanding officer Jennifer Stone (Carlson Romano) — Lewis calls the experience “probably one of my most fun shoots I'd ever had — still to this day.”

Related: Hilary Duff Says She'd Try Another 'Lizzie McGuire' Series After Canceled Reboot: 'I'm Optimistic'

One of the reasons, she explains, was the fact that it was filmed in the summer; another was her simple wardrobe: “One outfit, your hair was in one style. I was like, ‘This is great.’ ”

Another element that made the experience so special for Lewis was Duff herself.

“Hilary was great,” Lewis says. “Her and her mother were so, they were very influential for my mom and me. Hilary's mom is who encouraged us to come to L.A. and encouraged us to pursue certain things. And just to really stand on stuff.”

She continues, “Hilary was the first person I had met who had, at the time, a 360 deal. She had a record deal, she also was going to be doing a movie and she also had a series. I never heard of that. So I think in many ways, meeting Hilary when I was so young was very aspirational. You got to see somebody doing their career at a larger level.”

And while the experience was a positive one, Lewis says the fact that the movie is still talked about more than 20 years later surprises her.

“I did not expect that part of it, or even the magnitude of people's excitement for the film,” she says, while admitting she’s only seen it once or twice.

“To be recognized still so frequently for Cadet Kelly shocks me very much all the time,” she adds.

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In 2023, Lewis shared a video to TikTok reflecting on the movie's 21st anniversary, showing a photo of herself and Duff from at Los Angeles premiere. She'd placed the pic in a purple star-shaped pillow with the word "Hollywood" stitched onto it.

"Every time I think of Cadet Kelly, or every time someone brings it up to me I have the warmest feelings and memories," she says in the video. "Because I had a great time filming Cadet Kelly. It was the best."

So would she revisit Carla in a theoretical Cadet Kelly reunion? Lewis says the jury is still out.

“I can't decide if I think that's a good idea,” she says with a laugh before adding that “it would probably be very interesting to see a discussion on it.”

“Because something I discovered only as an adult about Cadet Kelly is that it's like a coming out movie for people,” she continues. “I would never in all my years have looked at that movie like that, seen it like that, but I discovered that during the pandemic, that it was this big coming out movie for people. And so I think that would be actually very interesting to have a discussion about with the cast as adults. Because I know when we were shooting, it wasn't a thought. And now looking back, you're like, ‘Oh my gosh, wait, we paint her hair in a rainbow. There's all this tension. Yes, it was a queer movie! Did somebody know that?' "

Lewis’ former costars have also offered their two cents on how the film is perceived all these years later, and shared in the Degrassi star’s surprise.

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"I have to watch the movie again. No one has brought that to my attention except for [How I Met Your Father costar] Tien Tran," Duff told Cosmopolitan in 2022 when asked about if she thought of the film as "being queer-coded."

"She was like, 'Oh my God. It is a moment in the queer community,' ” Duff continued of Tran. “All that close-talking with Jennifer. I didn't know that. But if it helped anybody, I hope so."

Related: Christy Carlson Romano Opens Up in Wide-Ranging Interview About Turning 40 After Surviving Child Stardom (Exclusive)

Carlson Romano addressed the discourse on her YouTube Channel in September 2021, saying, "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 between the two girls.”

She continued, "It really helped a lot of girls identify their sexuality. 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."

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