NEED TO KNOW
- Hilary Duff broke her silence on Call Her Daddy, saying Ashley Tisdale’s “toxic mom group” essay left her feeling “sad” and “used,” especially given the timing of her music comeback.
- Duff flatly denied Tisdale’s claims, saying “it sucks to read something that’s not true” on behalf of herself and the other women implicated.
- Husband Matthew Koma’s scorched-earth Instagram response was apparently a surprise to Duff — but she has zero regrets about it.
It took two months, a new album, and a podcast couch — but Hilary Duff has finally said her piece about Ashley Tisdale‘s viral “toxic mom group” drama. And spoiler: she is not here for any of it.
On the February 25 episode of Call Her Daddy (watch below), Duff sat down with host Alex Cooper and addressed Tisdale’s now-infamous January essay “Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group,” published in The Cut. The piece — in which Tisdale described feeling excluded, side-seated at dinner parties, and ultimately ghosted after trying to patch things up — didn’t name names. But as Duff herself put it with a raised eyebrow, “I don’t really think people had to connect very many dots, do you?”
The internet, of course, did not. Within hours of the essay’s New Year’s Day drop, fans had pieced together years of paparazzi shots, Instagram tags, and celebrity mom content to conclude that the group in question likely included Duff, Mandy Moore, and Meghan Trainor — a conclusion Tisdale’s rep denied, insisting the essay was about a different mom group entirely. Sure, Jan.
Duff wasn’t buying it. “I felt really sad. I honestly felt really sad,” she said. “I was pretty taken aback.” For someone who has been around the celebrity block since the Lizzie McGuire era, looking visibly rattled on a podcast is not nothing.
What stung the most, though, wasn’t just the public airing of supposed grievances — it was what Duff saw as a blatant inaccuracy. “It sucks to read something that’s, like, not true, and it sucks on behalf of, like, six women and all of their lives,” she said. When Cooper pressed her on whether she had anything to clarify about Tisdale’s specific claims, Duff’s response was a crisp, pointed: “Nope.”
Then came the real twist. Duff implied that the timing of Tisdale’s essay — dropped right as she was preparing to launch her first album in over a decade — was no accident. “I think it came at the craziest time where I was, like … the timing felt not great, and I felt used,” she said, connecting the dots between her music comeback and the sudden essay drop in a way that was subtle but unmistakable.
And if Duff was playing it cool, her husband Matthew Koma absolutely was not. In the days after the essay went viral, Koma posted a photoshopped image to his Instagram Stories — his face superimposed onto Tisdale’s Cut photo shoot pose — along with a fictional headline reading: “When You’re The Most Self Obsessed Tone Deaf Person On Earth, Other Moms Tend To Shift Focus To Their Actual Toddlers.” Readers, he did not hold back.
Duff says she didn’t see it coming. “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.”
Despite the drama swirling around their supposed shared circle, Duff name-dropped both Mandy Moore and Meghan Trainor during the episode — seemingly confirming she’s still very much in good standing with her fellow implicated moms. It’s almost like the “toxic” group isn’t quite as toxic as one party claimed.
The drama also collided awkwardly with what should have been a triumphant moment for Duff. Her sixth studio album, Luck… or Something, dropped February 20 — her first in more than ten years — and she has an arena tour kicking off in June. Instead of basking in comeback press, she spent weeks dodging questions about mom group politics. Not exactly the victory lap she deserved.
As for Tisdale? Her essay described how she ended relationships in her mom group circle because she felt left out and that it was becoming toxic, writing that after trying to smooth things over, “Some of the others tried to smooth things over. One sent flowers, then ignored me when I thanked her for them.” It’s a compelling read! It’s just, apparently, not the full story — at least according to the other women living in it.
Whether Tisdale responds remains to be seen. Until then, Hilary Duff has made her position clear. She felt sad. She felt used. And she has a world tour to get back to.
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