Additional Coverage:
- Hilary Duff calls Ashley Tisdale’s toxic mom group essay ‘sad’ and ‘untrue’ in first major response (the-independent.com)
Hilary Duff Responds to “Toxic Mom Group” Allegations, Expresses Sadness Over Essay
In a recent appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, actress Hilary Duff addressed the viral essay penned by Ashley Tisdale French in The Cut last year, which described a “toxic” celebrity mom group. While Tisdale French did not explicitly name individuals, she had previously been photographed with a group that included Duff, Mandy Moore, and Meghan Trainor, leading to speculation.
Duff openly shared her feelings about first encountering the essay, stating, “I felt really sad. I honestly felt really sad.
I was, like, pretty, pretty taken aback and felt just, like, sad.” The former Disney Channel star emphasized that motherhood has brought her numerous new friendships and directly disputed the claims made in the essay.
“So I think I just was like, ‘Woah,'” Duff recounted. “It sucks to read something that’s, like, not true.
And it sucks on behalf of, like, six women in all of their lives.”
Following the essay’s publication, Duff’s husband, Matthew Koma, publicly defended his wife with a satirical magazine cover post. The fake cover, featuring Koma, bore the headline: “A mom group tell all through a father’s eyes: When You’re the Most Self-Obsessed Tone Deaf Person on Earth, Other Moms Tend to Shift Focus To Their Actual Toddlers.” He humorously added in the caption, “Read my new interview with @thecut.”
Duff revealed on the podcast that she was unaware of her husband’s planned post. “Honestly, everything he does makes me laugh.
So I was like, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God,'” she said.
“But I also don’t censor him, and I don’t tell him what he can and can’t post. He is so, like, fierce for me, and, like, I love him for that.”
In her original essay, Tisdale French, who shares two children with Christopher French, described initially finding a “village” within her mom group after her daughter Jupiter’s birth in 2021. However, she claimed the dynamic later deteriorated, alleging she experienced “frozen out” and “excluded” behavior reminiscent of high school. She specifically noted, “I remember being left out of a couple of group hangs, and I knew about them because Instagram made sure it fed me every single photo and Instagram Story.”