Hilary Duff says she felt 'sad' after Ashley Tisdale’s viral 'toxic mom group' essay
Hilary Duff has spoken up about Ashley Tisdale-French's controversial "toxic mom group" essay, saying she feels "sad" to read something that is "not true."
In her interview on Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy podcast, the Lizzie McGuire star opened up about her feelings after reading the piece.
“I felt really sad. I honestly felt really sad,” Hilary said. “I was pretty, pretty taken aback and felt just, like, sad.”
She shared that motherhood has connected her with various groups of moms who have been her "ride or die" in years.
“So I think I just was like, ‘Whoa,’ ” she added. “It sucks to read something that's, like, not true. And it sucks on behalf of six women in all of their lives.”
She noted how Ashley's essay “came at the craziest time," especially since she had announced her world tour in January, the same month when the essay was published. "The timing felt not great and I felt used," she added.
In the "You're Allowed to Leave Your Mom Group" essay, Ashley described her mom group as a "village of moms" she didn't know she needed at the time. Ashley and her mom friends swapped parenting advice, shared photos of their kids, and celebrated each other's wins.
"But here's the thing nobody prepared me for: Mom groups can turn toxic," she wrote. "Not because the moms themselves are toxic people, but because the dynamic shifts into an ugly place with mean-girl behavior."
"In my mom group, I started to notice that certain people would get talked about when they weren't present, and not in a positive way. I realized that there were group text chains that didn't include everyone, which led to cliques forming within the larger group," she added.
She left the group after the third or fourth time seeing photos on social media of everyone in the group hanging out—events she said she wasn't invited to.
The piece received mixed reactions, including one on Hilary's husband Matthew Koma's Instagram Story, which showed him mimicking Ashley’s pose from The Cut with the caption: "When You're The Most Self Obsessed Tone Deaf Person On Earth, Other Moms Tend To Shift Focus To Their Actual Toddlers.”
The mother of four said she didn’t know her husband would post such a sharp reply. “Honestly, everything he does makes me laugh. So I was like, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God.’ 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," she said.
Hilary announced her music comeback in 2025, 10 years since she released her last album, Breathe In. Breathe Out. She revealed her upcoming world tour at the final stop of her "Small Rooms, Big Nerves" mini tour in Los Angeles.
