Hilary Duff is opening up about being at the center of the drama surrounding Ashley Tisdale’s viral “Toxic Mom Group” essay.
While appearing on the Call Her Daddy podcast on Wednesday, the actress-singer reflected the buzz around Tisdale’s January essay “Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group” for The Cut. In the essay, Tisdale reflected on no longer being a part of a mom group due to feeling excluded and for acting like they were in high school. Though Tisdale did not directly name the members of the mom group, Tisdale has been photographed in the past spending time with Duff, Mandy Moore, and Meghan Trainor’s mom group. She now only follows Trainor on Instagram.
When talking about the essay Duff told host Alex Cooper, “I felt really sad. I honestly felt really sad. I was pretty taken aback and felt just sad.”
She went on to say that she feels “lucky” given that motherhood has brought her a “core group of friends” who have been her “ride or die for 10 to 20 years.”
“I have tons of different groups of mom friends because I have four kids, you know? So, I think I just was like, ‘Whoa.’ It sucks to read something that’s not true and it sucks on behalf of like six women and all of their lives,” she added.
Duff’s husband, Matthew Koma, also made headlines at the time for sharing a pointed response to Tisdale’s essay by recreating her photo used for The Cut and writing a headline that read, “When You’re The Most Self Obsessed Tone Deaf Person On Earth, Other Moms Tend To Shift Focus To Their Actual Toddlers.”
Duff said that she didn’t know Koma was going to post that but noted, “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 fierce for me and I love him for that.”
The essay was published amid Duff’s return to music, preparing to release her first album in a decade. Duff said the timing also made her feel “used”: “I think it came at like the craziest time where I was like, like the timing felt not great and I felt used.”
In a conversation with The Los Angeles Times, Duff said that the public attention cased from the essay was something she was used to. “This is not new for me,” Duff told the Los Angeles Times. “I’ve had this since I was maybe 15 and starting to get followed around by paparazzi. Everything starts getting documented and everyone knows my life and all the players in it. So the stories that get news pickup — it’s not what happens to a normal person who maybe became an actor as an adult.”
Duff recently released her new album, luck… or something, her first in years. The album was largely written alongside her husband.
