By DEIRDRE DURKAN-SIMONDS, US ASSOCIATE SHOWBUSINESS EDITOR
Hilary Duff is speaking out after being swept into the online conversation sparked by Ashley Tisdale's viral essay about stepping away from a so-called 'toxic mom group.'
The 38-year-old singer addressed the controversy during her appearance on Wednesday's episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, where host Alex Cooper asked her directly about Tisdale's January essay, Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group, published in The Cut.
Although Ashley Tisdale, 40, did not name names in the piece, fans quickly speculated that the unnamed group included Duff, Mandy Moore and Meghan Trainor, all of whom had previously been photographed spending time together as new moms.
'I have to ask just because it's been so freaking noisy,' Cooper said, noting that the article 'literally took the internet by storm' as fans quickly speculated about who the unidentified moms might be.
'I don't really think people had to connect very many dots,' Duff quipped.
As for how she felt when the essay first came out, the mother-of-four got vulnerable as she said it made her 'really sad.'
'I honestly felt really sad,' she said. 'I was, like, pretty, pretty taken aback and felt just, like, sad.'
Duff explained that motherhood has expanded, not narrowed, her circle, emphasizing that she has long-standing friendships alongside multiple groups of mom friends.
'I have so many groups of friends. I'm so lucky,' she said. 'Motherhood has brought on, like, I have my core group of friends who have been my ride-or-dies for 10 to 20 years, and I have tons of different groups of mom friends because I have four kids.'
She continued, 'So I think I just was like, "Woah." It sucks to read something that's, like, not true. And it sucks on behalf of, like six women in all of their lives.'
Duff spoke of the situation in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, published Friday, where she was asked whether the viral drama made her hesitate about returning to pop music while promoting her new album.
'I mean, this is not new for me. I've had this since I was maybe 15 and starting to get followed around by paparazzi,' she said. 'Everything starts getting documented and everyone knows my life and all the players in it.'
She continued, 'So the stories that get news pickup - it's not what happens to a normal person who maybe became an actor as an adult. And now it's escalated by the talking heads on TikTok that need clickbait.'
Duff admitted that the speculation can sometimes sting.
'It's hard because you're like, 'Wait, whoa, that person kind of got it right,' and 'Whoa that person doesn't know what they're talking about,' she said, recalling one rumor that claimed other moms and even teachers disliked her.
'I was like, "First of all... the women at school are lovely and I'm obsessed with all of them,"' she added.
When asked how she copes with online chatter, Duff said it depends on the day.
'Knowing that I get to open up the backdoors and play soccer as a family and take a hot tub and go get our chicken eggs - that's the purpose of life,' she shared. 'On the days when crazy st happens, I go home and quiet the noise.'
The essay also prompted a pointed, and satirical, response from Duff's husband, singer-songwriter Matthew Koma.
Shortly after it was published, he posted a photoshopped image to his Instagram Story that recreated The Cut's cover photo of Tisdale, this time featuring his own face and 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.'
A smaller subhead joked: 'A Mom Group Tell All Through A Father's Eye.'
Tisdale's original essay detailed her experience feeling increasingly excluded from her mom circle during the postpartum period.
While she stressed that she did not consider the women 'bad people (maybe one),' she wrote that the group dynamic stopped feeling healthy for her and described noticing gatherings she was not invited to - only to see them later posted on Instagram.
'It took me back to an unpleasant but familiar feeling I thought I'd left behind years ago,' she wrote. 'Here I was sitting alone one night after getting my daughter to bed thinking Maybe I'm not cool enough?'
Tisdale's article, titled 'Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group,' detailed her feelings of feeling frozen out by friends during her postpartum period.
She ultimately said she chose to step away, texting the group: 'This is too high school for me and I don't want to take part in it anymore.'
Fans further fueled speculation after Tisdale unfollowed both Duff and Moore on Instagram around the time the essay ran.
The actress had previously spoken warmly about the group, once calling it her 'village of moms' after welcoming her daughter Jupiter in 2021, and thanking them publicly as recently as January 2025 for support during the Los Angeles wildfires.
While Tisdale has never publicly identified the women involved, Duff and Moore appear to remain close.
The longtime friends have spoken openly about their bond, even living together during last year's wildfires after Moore lost her family home, and have recently shared photos from a festive outing with their children.
Duff shares son Luca Cruz Comrie, 13, with ex-husband Mike Comrie, and daughters Banks Violet, 7, Mae James, 4, and Townes Meadow, 1, with Koma.