It looks like there’s some drama between Ashley Tisdale (who now goes by Ashley French) and her former fellow celeb mom friends.
Steve Granitz / Getty Images
This week, Ashley — who shares two young daughters with her husband, Christopher French — penned a raw essay for the Cut titled, “Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group.”
Jon Kopaloff / Getty Images
For what it’s worth, Ashley noted toward the start of the piece that “online sleuths” shouldn’t speculate about what exactly went down between her and her now-ex friends. That said, it is public knowledge that Ashley’s former group of “mom friends” featured celebrities like Meghan Trainor, Hilary Duff, and Mandy Moore. The group have long shared photos from their hangouts, with Meghan captioning one 2022 photo dump, “I have mom friends and I love them.”Before getting into the “mom-group drama,” Ashley noted in the essay that she began “craving connection with other mothers” after the birth of her first daughter — and grew “certain” that she’d found her “village” after connecting with a group of fellow celebrity moms.However, she wrote, “Over time, I began to wonder whether that was really true. 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. Another time, at one of the mom’s dinner parties, I realized where I sat with her — which was at the end of the table, far from the rest of the women. I was starting to feel frozen out of the group, noticing every way that they seemed to exclude me.”
Robin Marchant / Getty Images
Related: 15 Celebrities Who Got Called Out In Songs, But They Didn’t Let The Artist Have The Last Word
Ashley said that while she tried not to take anything personally at first, she couldn’t help but “sense a growing distance” between herself and the “other members of the group.”
“When everyone else attended a birthday dinner together, I was met with excuses as to why I hadn’t been invited. I still don’t get why I wasn’t at the girl hang that they all planned at my daughter’s birthday,” she wrote, before accusing the group of having a “pattern of leaving someone out.”
“During the early days of the group, there was another mom who often wasn’t included. I’d picked up on hints of a weird dynamic, but at the time, I didn’t dwell on it too much. I was just so happy to have found these incredible, smart, funny women. Now it seemed that this group had a pattern of leaving someone out. And that someone had become me,” she claimed.
After feeling “totally lost” as to why she was suddenly being excluded from the group, Ashley revealed that she confronted the moms via text. “’This is too high school for me and I don’t want to take part in it anymore,’” she wrote before recounting that, “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.”
“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,” she added, noting that the entire thing brought her “to tears” when it played out.
Despite Ashley’s warning, the essay has since sparked a heap of speculation about the reasoning behind the drama. Meanwhile, eagle-eyed fans have noticed that while Ashley is still following Meghan on Instagram, she is no longer following Hilary or Mandy.
Taylor Hill / Getty Images
We’ll keep you posted if more unfolds, but for now, you can check out Ashley’s essay for yourself right here.More on this
Also in Celebrity: Here’s What Quinta Brunson Had To Say About Her Divorce From Kevin Anik
Also in Celebrity: Macaulay Culkin Shared How John Candy Noticed His Father Was “A Monster,” And It’s Upsetting