Mandy Moore Breaks Silence on Ashley Tisdale Mom Group Drama

Four months after Ashley Tisdale’s essay about leaving her “toxic mom group” took over the internet, Mandy Moore is finally ready to talk about it — and she’s not holding much back.

Appearing on SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live on May 18, the This Is Us star addressed the drama that’s been swirling since Tisdale published “Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group” in The Cut back in January. The essay described feeling systematically excluded from a group of celebrity moms — and while Tisdale never named names, the internet connected the dots almost immediately, pointing to Moore, Hilary Duff, and Meghan Trainor based on years of shared social media moments.

Moore didn’t deny it.

“It’s wild to have anybody talk about your life, and I know Hilary has sort of mentioned this too,” she told Cohen. “It’s like we both have grown up in this business and had people dissect who we are and the choices we make and all of that, but this was something altogether different and decidedly way more upsetting. It just cuts to the core.”

For Moore, the sting wasn’t really about the gossip cycle. It was about something more personal — her sense of who she is.

“The most important thing in my life is being a kind person and like that legacy of kindness, and anyone even insinuating that that might not be the case, and with the company that I choose to keep, is very upsetting,” she said. “I’d say that was the biggest takeaway, sort of the shock of like, ‘Wow.’”

“I Wouldn’t Have Handled the Situation This Way”

Moore — who shares three children with her husband, musician Taylor Goldsmith — was candid about the fact that she and Tisdale simply would have approached things differently. She describes herself as someone who is “really scared by confrontation,” but when something genuinely matters to her, she’s a “huge proponent” of having it out face-to-face.

“It’s not always like the most comfortable of situations, but I think that’s where I sort of differed in feeling like I wouldn’t have handled the situation this way,” she said plainly.

What bothered her almost as much as the essay itself was the media frenzy that followed — and what she felt it implied about women.

“I think the biggest takeaway from that whole ridiculous debacle of like, ‘Wow, so it’s a real slow news day,’ is that I feel like it just sort of perpetuates this silly trope that women can’t be supportive of one another and that we’re inherently petty and that we’re inherently out to one-up each other,” Moore said. “And I have not felt that one iota since becoming a parent.”

She went further, pushing back on the narrative with something that clearly means a lot to her. “I’ve actually been so surprised by the meaningful relationships I found with other moms and other parents just in general. That has always been my takeaway, and you need that. You need community. You need to find that support wherever you can get it.”

What Tisdale Actually Wrote

Tisdale’s essay — which originally appeared on her personal blog as “You’re Allowed to Leave Your Mom Group” before being reworked for The Cut — described bonding with a group of working moms during the COVID-19 pandemic and the slow, painful unraveling of those friendships.

“I was starting to feel frozen out of the group, noticing every way that they seemed to exclude me,” she wrote. “I remember being left out of a couple of group hangs, and I knew about them because Instagram made sure it fed me every single photo and Instagram Story.”

She also revealed a pattern she’d noticed even before it happened to her: “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. Now it seemed that this group had a pattern of leaving someone out. And that someone had become me.”

Eventually, Tisdale sent a final text to the group: “This is too high school for me, and I don’t want to take part in it anymore.” She closed the essay with a message to other moms in similar situations: “You deserve to go through motherhood with people who actually, you know, like you.”

A rep for Tisdale spoke to TMZ shortly after publication to deny that the essay was specifically about Moore, Duff, or Trainor. But a source close to the group told PEOPLE exclusively that “it was a misalignment of values that Ashley decided to make public,” adding pointedly: “Friends naturally drift apart. It didn’t warrant a dramatic breakup text.”

Hilary Duff Has Already Weighed In

Moore isn’t the first from the suspected group to speak up. Duff addressed the essay on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy back in February, saying she was “pretty, pretty taken aback” and felt “really sad” reading it. “It sucks to read something that’s, like, not true,” she said. “And it sucks on behalf of six women in all of their lives.”

Duff also noted — with a touch of dry humor — that “I don’t really think people had to connect very many dots” to figure out she was among the moms being written about.

On the Therapuss podcast with Jake Shane, Duff spoke more broadly about her approach to friendship, saying she’s always had a sharp instinct for people. “I have really good friends, and it doesn’t take me long to figure someone out or just figure out that someone’s not for me,” she said. She added that she’d rather have a direct conversation than let resentment fester: “I just always want my side of the street to be clean.”

Duff’s husband, Matthew Koma, took a less diplomatic approach — he posted a photoshopped image of himself onto Tisdale’s body alongside a fictional The Cut headline reading: “When You’re The Most Self Obsessed Tone Deaf Person On Earth, Other Moms Tend To Shift Focus To Their Actual Toddlers.”

Moore Had Already Hinted at How She Felt

Even before her Andy Cohen Live appearance, Moore gave a glimpse of where her head was at. Speaking to Entertainment Tonight at the May 13 premiere of her new film The Breadwinner, she said she’s been genuinely “surprised” by the friendships she’s formed since becoming a mom.

“I think it is important for any parent to find community, and I feel really lucky and very surprised by the really meaningful adult relationships that I’ve made since becoming a mom,” she said. “Like, to be able to lean on other people who are going through very similar times in their life — everyone deserves that.”

Earlier this year, in a Glamour cover story on Duff, Moore spoke about the pair’s close friendship — one that began with a chance meeting in 2018 — and what it means to surround her kids with people whose values she trusts. “I feel exceedingly lucky that my kids happen to spend time with people that I feel like our values are aligned with,” she said. “The friends that I’ve made since becoming a parent are some of the deeper, more surprising friendships I’ve found as an adult.”

It’s a sentiment that feels like both a defense and a declaration. Whatever happened with Tisdale, Moore seems clear on what she believes about the women still in her corner.