When Ashley Tisdale French gave permission for mothers to exit their “toxic” mum’s group, it sent readers and avid 2000s Disney channel viewers into a tizzy. But probably not for the reason she expected.
In January 2026, the High School Musical actress published an essay with The Cut titled, ‘Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group.’
Ashley revealed she joined a mum group because she was “craving connection” following the birth of her first daughter during COVID.
Initially, Ashley felt like she had found her “village.” But that changed when Ashley felt she was excluded from “group hangs.”
“I was starting to feel frozen out of the group, noticing every way that they seemed to exclude me,” she wrote. “Now it seemed that this group had a pattern of leaving someone out.”
She attempted to confront the group, but “it didn’t exactly go over well.”
“Some of the others tried to smooth things over. One sent flowers, then ignored me when I thanked her for them. Another tried to convince me that everyone assumed I’d been invited to gatherings and just hadn’t shown up. Then why didn’t anyone ever ask where I was? I wondered,” she wrote.
“To be clear, I have never considered the moms to be bad people. (Maybe one.) But I do think our group dynamic stopped being healthy and positive — for me, anyway.”
The mum group in question featured a lot of our favourite childhood stars from the 2000s including Hilary Duff and Mandy Moore, singer Meghan Trainor, plus a few other mums.
However, Ashley’s rep denied the story had to do with Hilary, Mandy, and Meghan. But that hasn’t stopped them from speaking out.
A few days after the essay was released, Hilary Duff’s husband Matthew Koma weighed in on the drama, sharing an image of his head photoshopped onto Ashley’s The Cut image. His headline read, “A Mom Group Tell All Through A Father’s Eyes,” with the sub-heading reading, “When You’re The Most Self-Obsessed Tone-Deaf Person on Earth, Other Moms Tend to Shift Focus to Their Actual Toddlers.”
What did Mandy Moore say about the “toxic” mum group drama?
In the months following, Mandy has discussed her friendship with Hilary and how the group started. However, she didn’t discuss the situation explicitly until May.
“It’s wild to have anybody talk about your life, and I know Hilary [Duff] has sort of mentioned this too,” she said while chatting on Andy Cohen.
“It’s like we both have grown up in this business and had people dissect who we are and the choices we make and all of that, but this was something altogether different and decidedly way more upsetting… It just cuts to the core.”
“The most important thing in my life is being a kind person and like that legacy of kindness, and anyone even insinuating that that might not be the case, and with the company that I choose to keep is very upsetting.”
Why was Ashley Tisdale removed from the mum group?
A source previously told People, “It was a misalignment of values that Ashley decided to make public.”
“Friends naturally drift apart. It didn’t warrant a dramatic breakup text.”
Furthermore, a source told The US Sun that Ashley’s dissolution from the group “wasn’t an overnight thing. Her politics don’t align with a lot of the group members, which drove a wedge between them.”
“But the big straw that broke the camel’s back was how Ashley responded to the group about the LA wildfires last year,” the source said, referring to the January 2025 fires.
“Multiple members of the group were impacted, some worse than others, and Ashley hardly checked in.”
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