POSING in matching white tracksuits alongside Hilary Duff and Mandy Moore, Ashley Tisdale appeared to be part of the mother of all mum tribes.
But behind closed doors and beneath the glossy Instagram snaps, the High School Musical alum was struggling with what she now describes as a ‘toxic’ friendship group. And as she’s brutally dumped from the A-list mummy inner circle, insiders tell us the real reason it all came crumbling down, descending into Hollywood’s most bitter feud.
While Ashley insists she left the group, those who were part of her circle are pushing back, insisting they weren’t to blame.
A source who is close to the friend group that Ashley, 40, was formerly a part of and wrote about, which also includes Hilary, Mandy, and singer Meghan Trainor, claimed that she had been “slowly slipping away” from those pals “for years.”
“It wasn’t an overnight thing. Her politics don’t align with a lot of the group members, which drove a wedge between them.
“But the big straw that broke the camel’s back was how Ashley responded to the group about the LA wildfires last year.
“Multiple members of the group were impacted, some worse than others, and Ashley hardly checked in,” the source said of the January 2024 tragedy that ravaged Los Angeles.
“She didn’t offer to help with the means she has. She just lived her own life, didn’t check in to see how they were doing, and her friends felt abandoned by her.
“Her friends felt the amount of self-absorption she showed just got worse, and it was impossible to maintain a friendship with her since it was so one-sided.
“It seemed like she was only interested in things that benefited her or suited her interests.”
Mandy Moore, 41, who is part of the friend group, lost her house in the Eaton fire, in addition to her brother and sister-in-law losing their family home.
Ashley’s political views also appeared to only intensify the feud, with the insider claiming: “Some of Ashley’s comments about politics and even a select few of her social media posts made mums in the group feel uncomfortable with her by association.
“It created an extremely toxic dynamic. They questioned her morals and what she believes in.
“It’s not just this mum group that’s experienced this behavior from Ashley. Vanessa Hudgens drifted apart from her for the same reasons,” they said of Ashley’s former BFF and High School Musical co-star.
Rumors of a feud began when Ashley was notably absent from Vanessa Hudgens’ December 2023 wedding to MLB star Cole Tucker in Mexico, and have hardly interacted since.
“Her putting out that letter made those girls feel like it was such a slap in the face to the years of friendship they had built.
“She took little to no accountability for her own actions that caused this and seemed like she just wanted to deflect and get ahead of it in case anyone from the group spoke up about her in the future.
“The girls are mad but also found it funny she felt the need to do this. Further prove she’s not a good friend.”
The U.S. Sun reached out to Ashley’s team for comment.
MORE MAMA DRAMA
On Monday, Ashley, who welcomed her second child with husband Chris French last year, bluntly slammed a “toxic” group.
In a new blog post for The Cut, Ashley, whose married name is Ashley French, told of the “unpleasant” feeling she began to experience in the bunch, which left her “feeling totally lost as to what I was doing wrong to be left out.”
In the piece, tellingly titled You’re Allowed To Leave Your Mom Group, she explained how she took a stand after “being left out from yet another group hang.”
“During the early days of the group, there was another mom who often wasn’t included.
“I’d picked up on hints of a weird dynamic, but at the time, I didn’t dwell on it too much. I was just so happy to have found these incredible, smart, funny women.
“Now it seemed that this group had a pattern of leaving someone out. And that someone had become me,” the actress wrote.
‘AM I NOT COOL ENOUGH?’
She continued: “Why me? The truth is, I don’t know and I probably never will. What I do know is that it took me back to an unpleasant but familiar feeling I thought I’d left behind years ago.
“Here I was sitting alone one night after getting my daughter to bed, thinking, maybe I’m not cool enough? All of a sudden, I was in high school again, feeling totally lost as to what I was doing wrong to be left out.
“Even though it had been decades since tenth grade, the experience of being left out felt so similar.”
The screen star told how she “knew I had to speak out” to set a good example for her daughters.
She wrapped her message by declaring the action she took to remove herself from the situation and said: “So that’s exactly what I texted to the group after being left out of yet another group hang: ‘This is too high school for me, and I don’t want to take part in it anymore.’ It didn’t exactly go over well.
“Some of the others tried to smooth things over. One sent flowers, then ignored me when I thanked her for them. Another tried to convince me that everyone assumed I’d been invited to gatherings and just hadn’t shown up.
“Then why didn’t anyone ever ask where I was?, I wondered. To be clear, I have never considered the moms to be bad people. (Maybe one.)
“But I do think our group dynamic stopped being healthy and positive — for me, anyway.”
