Hilary Duff Calls Bullshit On Ashley Tisdale’s Toxic Mum Group Essay In Spicy Call Her Daddy Episode & Opens Up About Vintage Lindsay Lohan Feud

Hilary Duff has officially addressed Ashley Tisdale’s viral “toxic mom group” essay, and honestly, out of all the feuds and shady subtweets in celeb-land, I can’t believe it’s the mum chat drama that’s got me emotionally invested.

Duff popped up on the latest episode of Call Her Daddy, where host Alex Cooper straight-up asked her about Tisdale’s January piece for The Cut, “Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group”, which detailed being iced out of hangs and made to feel like she was back in high school. The essay didn’t name names, but the internet very quickly decided the mystery crew was a celeb mum squad that allegedly included Duff, Mandy Moore and Meghan Trainor, and Duff admitted she doesn’t think people had to “connect very many dots” to get there.​

Speaking about reading the essay for the first time, Duff said she “felt really sad” and “pretty taken aback”, and that the whole thing just left her feeling “sad” for everyone involved. She stressed that she has “tons of different groups of mum friends” thanks to having four kids, plus a core group who’ve been her “ride or dies” for about 20 years, and pushed back on the implication that there was some kind of intentionally cruel inner circle.

“It sucks to read something that’s not true, and it sucks on behalf of six women and all of their lives,” she said.

Duff also revealed that the timing made the whole thing sting even more, because she was in the middle of rolling out Luck… or Something, her first album in a decade, and gearing up for a world tour when the essay blew up. She said the piece “came at the craziest time” and admitted “the timing felt not great and I felt used”. I guess being folded into viral discourse while she was trying to focus on her music was not exactly the dream comeback vibe, but all press is good press, baby!

Of course, Duff wasn’t the only one dragged into the mess. Her husband, musician Matthew Koma, went semi-viral in January after he recreated Tisdale’s promo image for The Cut on Instagram and slapped his own brutal headline on it: “When You’re the Most Self Obsessed Tone Deaf Person on Earth, Other Moms Tend To Shift Focus To Their Actual Toddlers”, framed as “a mum group tell all through a father’s eyes”.

On Call Her Daddy, Duff said she had no idea he was going to post it, but wasn’t exactly furious. “Honestly, everything he does makes me laugh,” she said, adding that she doesn’t “censor him” or tell him what he can and can’t post, and that “he is so, like, fierce for me, and, like, I love him for that”.

Koma later deleted the post and soon after Tisdale’s husband, Christopher French, also chimed in with a pointed Instagram Story that read, “It’s your choice whether or not to engage”, which fans immediately read as shade in the opposite direction.

Tisdale first opened up about the friendship breakdown in a December blog post, before expanding on it in The Cut, where she wrote about feeling excluded from group outings, describing “mean girl” vibes and likening the dynamic to “emotional echoes of high school”.

She recalled texting the group, “This is too high school for me, and I don’t want to take part in it anymore”, and later wrote that if a mum group leaves you feeling “hurt, drained or left out”, it’s simply not the right one for you.

Duff, meanwhile, told the Los Angeles Times that on the days when “crazy shit happens”, she goes home and “quiets the noise”, and that time with her family — son Luca and daughters Banks, Mae and Townes — is the “purpose of life”.

Now that she’s finally spoken on the record, it sounds like she’s said what she needed to say and is ready to get back to music and hopefully releasing more tickets for her tour. PLS!

Hillary spills on vintage Lindsay Lohan feud tea

Oh, and if mum-group-gate wasn’t enough, the same Call Her Daddy chat also gave us confirmation that Duff “absolutely” crashed Lindsay Lohan’s Freaky Friday premiere back in 2003, calling the Mean Girls star her “childhood feud” and “nemesis” before revealing the pair later made up in a club when Lohan asked, “Are we good?” and insisted they do a shot together.

In case you’re not across the early-2000s pop culture lore, the beef between Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan was peak teen-queen drama. The tension reportedly kicked off over their mutual romance with teen heartthrob Aaron Carter, who dated both stars during the height of their Disney fame. Subtle jabs were traded in interviews, shady lyrics were speculated about, and fans chose sides like their lives depended on it.

The drama really came to a head when Hilary Duff showed up to the premiere of Freaky Friday — which starred Lindsay and Chad Michael Murray — on the arm of Aaron Carter, which was a major spectacle at the time.

Lindsay later retaliated by rocking up to the A Cinderella Story premiere arm-in-arm with Chad Michael Murray, who played Hilary’s love interest in the film. And now, decades later, we finally have closure on the long-running feud.

So between the toxic mum-group saga and the resurrected Lindsay Lohan feud, Hilary’s basically reminded us that the 2000s never really ended — they just moved to podcasts and group chats.

Lead image: The Cut via IG / Call Her Daddy / X