Ashley Tisdale-French has decided to air out in public the messy side of celebrity life most people only guess.
In a personal essay, the former High School Musical star says she walked away from a mom friend group after it started feeling “toxic” and weirdly familiar. Stating it was like being shut out in high school all over again.
People Magazine reported that Tisdale said the shift didn’t happen in one big explosion, it progressed with little cuts. She noticed she was getting left out of get togethers, and she’d find out the same way a lot of us do now, by seeing the photos online after the fact.
In the essay, Tisdale says back during the pandemic, the group sounded like exactly what new parents were desperate for. Highlighting that many of them were pregnant during lockdown, missing the normal ways people meet other moms, that finally pulled together once life opened back up.
Tisdale-French is a mom of two, and she framed it as looking for a “village,” not a spotlight.
When things went wrong
In the essay, Tisdale stated what she wrote to the moms group when she decided it was over. It read “This is too high school for me and I don’t want to take part in it anymore.”
Some women in the group tried to smooth it over, while others pushed back and suggested she was imagining things.
Sadly, her Instagram feed didn’t help. She described being fed posts and Stories from hangouts she wasn’t invited to. It was a feeling of spiralling into an old, ugly headspace. A place where she wondered about what she did “wrong.”
The E! News write-up highlighted that she felt “frozen out” over time, not just once.
The names she didn’t say
What happened next was a game of guess who, as outlets speculated who the mom’s group may include.
The most common names mentioned include Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore, and Meghan Trainor. In Tisdale’s essay, no names are mentioned, but that didn’t stop the internet connecting dots.
E! News highlighted that she had previously shared glimpses of time with those celebrity moms and Cosmopolitan added to the speculation by reporting who Tisdale unfollowed. The names included Duff and Moore. All of which poured gasoline on the rumor mill fire.
None of that is confirmation, but it’s the kind of modern “evidence” that turns private tension into public sport.
The website Mamamia leaned into how bizarre the whole thing feels for longtime pop culture fans, as familiar names are pulled into a very current kind of online pile-on. The framing was basically, yes, it sounds like teen drama, but it’s happening in 2026 with adults.
Why it hits a nerve
Tisdale wrote that she was impressed by the women in the group. Women who were building brands, running companies, while still doing the things that make moms great.
That’s a powerful mix of admiration and pressure to keep pace with.
For a lot of people struggling with friendships, the core of this story isn’t fame, it’s the sinking feeling of being left out when you thought you’d found your people.
Throw in motherhood, celebrity schedules, publicists, and social media optics, and it adds to a pressure cooker of emotions. Yet, I’m still surprised that something as ordinary as mom group drama can get scaled up into a national entertainment.
Still, Tisdale’s point wasn’t “these women are monsters.” She even wrote that she didn’t see them as bad people. The takeaway was simple and sharp, motherhood is hard enough without feeling like the people around you don’t actually like you.
It’s important to know that no one from the rumored circle has publicly confirmed a fight, and at least one report noted there were no immediate comments from the other stars’ reps. A silence that is likely to keep the speculation alive.