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Ashley Tisdale French and Hayley Duff shared a moment from their daughters’ playdate on their Instagram Stories on Tuesday, January 27.
Duff, 40, shared a photo of Tisdale’s daughter Jupiter, 4, and daughter Lulu, 7, playing under the table. Duff captioned the photo, “Prank under the table,” and Tisdale reposted it to her Instagram Stories.
Duff and Tisdale’s friendship goes back several years, with Tisdale even selling Duff his former Los Angeles home in Studio City about 10 years ago. Duff bought the home from Tisdale in 2016 for $2.7 million, according to a real estate agent.
The post comes amid the ongoing fallout from Tisdale’s essay titled “The Cut,” titled “Leaving a Toxic Parent Group.” The mother of two first opened up about the experience in December 2025 in a candid blog post titled “I’m Allowed to Leave Mommy Group.”
“When I became a mom, I wanted connection as much as I wanted sleep. So I did what a lot of people do: I joined a mom group,” Tisdale wrote in a viral post in December. “But this is something no one prepared me for. Mom groups can be toxic, not because moms themselves are toxic people, but because the power dynamics shift to ugly places with mean girl behavior. I know this from personal experience.”
Ashley Tisdale/Instagram
In January, Tisdale expanded on this post in an essay for The Cut. She made the women in her former friend group anonymous, instead framing the experience as a reminder that it was okay to walk away from relationships that no longer felt healthy.
“If a mom group always makes you feel hurt, drained, or left out, it’s not the mom group for you,” she wrote. “Choosing distance doesn’t mean being mean or critical; it allows you to be true to yourself. It’s also worth remembering that, like all relationships, friendships have seasons.”
Ever since Tisdale published her story in The Cut, fans have been speculating about the members of the allegedly “toxic” mom group, including Duff’s sister Hilary Duff. Hilary’s husband, Matthew Koma, criticized Tisdale’s essay in a Jan. 6 Instagram Story post, in which he called Tisdale “the most self-centered tone-deaf person on the planet.”
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On January 19, in her first concert since 2015, Hilary, 38, returned to the stage at London’s O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire to debut a new song titled ‘We Don’t Talk’, which appears to be a reference to her alleged rift with sister Hayley.
Hilary didn’t say who the song is about, but she hasn’t been seen in public with Hailey since 2019, according to the New York Post’s Page Six.
Hilary’s next album, “Luck…or Something,” will be released on Friday, February 20th via Atlantic Records.
