Hilary Duff didn’t see Ashley Tisdale‘s celebrity mom group essay coming. In a recent appearance on Call Her Daddy, the singer and actress lightly responded to the article published in The Cut earlier this year, in which Tisdale detailed being iced out by other moms in a group presumed to include Duff, Meghan Trainor, Mandy Moore, and more. “I felt really sad. I honestly felt really sad,” Duff said. “I was pretty taken aback.”
Duff has a son from her previous marriage and shares three children with her husband, songwriter Matthew Koma. “I have my core group of friends who have been my ride or dies for 20 years, 10 to 20 years, and I have tons of different groups of mom friends because I have four kids,” she said. “So I think I just was like, whoa, it sucks to read something that’s not true, and it sucks on behalf of six women in all of their lives.”
Tisdale’s essay, titled “Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group,” was published on Jan. 1. She wrote about finding community among other mothers with similar backgrounds and responsibilities, only to then feel left out of group hangouts and sit in unfavorable positions at their dinner parties. “This is too high school for me, and I don’t want to take part in it anymore,” Tisdale said she texted the group after a while.
Duff didn’t want to take part in the conversation about it at all, really. “I think it came at the craziest time where I was like, the timing felt not great, and I felt used,” she said on Call Her Daddy. Duff just made her return to music with her sixth album, Luck… or Something, which marked her first in over a decade. The single “Roommates” arrived in the aftermath of the mom group drama. While she didn’t speak on the discourse and speculation directly, her husband did.
On Instagram, Koma published a mock photo of his own makeshift The Cut essay. “A Mom Group Tell All Through a Father’s Eyes,” it read. “When You’re The Most Self Obsessed Tone Deaf Person On Earth, Other Moms Tend To Shift Focus To Their Actual Toddlers.” Duff claimed she didn’t know Koma was going to chime in, but noted that she wouldn’t have stopped him even if he’d given her a heads up.
“Honestly, everything he does makes me laugh,” Duff said. “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.”
Koma and Duff recorded Luck… or Something together. “Everyone has a way to tell you how they feel about what you make, and that felt scary,” Duff recently told Rolling Stone about her return to music. “I was like, ‘Why would I subject myself to this? We have a happy life and amazing kids.’ But obviously, I miss performing, and I desperately miss having that person be in the forefront.”
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