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Ashley Tisdale and her husband are unbothered by the fallout from the actress’ viral “toxic mom group” article.
Christopher French, who hosts the “Recovering” podcast, told Page Six he is standing firm in the “High School Musical” star’s corner after she publicly put her former friends on blast.
“We’re doing fine,” French said this week. “She’s a super smart, capable person, and she knows what she’s doing and that’s part of what I love about her.”
Tisdale wrote a piece for “The Cut” in January, where she revealed she moved on from the “toxic” mom friends she had been close to since her oldest daughter was born in 2021.
In the open letter to the group, Tisdale, 41, said she was done with their “mean girl behavior,” claiming she had been left out of plans, among other instances of betrayal. She said she severed ties with a group text that read, “This is too high school for me.”
French, 44, applauded his wife for how she approached the drama.
“I will say, I have no problem supporting my wife completely in her ability to deal with her own interpersonal relationships in whatever way feels is right for her, without getting involved or feeling like I have to speak for her,” he said.
“She’s a really smart chick. She’s a very capable person, which is really what made it so hard. We are very private, but in speaking to something that really matters to her.”
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Although Tisdale never confirmed her ex-friends’ identities, there was much speculation that Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore, and Meghan Trainor were a part of the group. Duff, 38, publicly shared that her former friend wasn’t painting an accurate picture.
“It sucks to read something that’s, like, not true,” Duff said of the essay on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast in February. “And it sucks on behalf of six women in all of their lives.”
Tisdale kept a low profile following the release of her “Breaking Up with my Toxic Mom Group” piece, but recently stepped into the spotlight on French’s podcast.
During their conversation, Tisdale got candid about her other struggles in motherhood.
“In the episode, the postpartum depression stuff she’s talking about, there are things that we all go through that are not logical,” French, who has been proudly sober for nearly 20 years, said. “Whether it’s emotional stuff, or speaking about our own experiences in general. It can be really hard to know how to navigate that stuff.”
“In the case of postpartum depression, she’s trying to use these tools that she had built over time to deal with all of these other issues, any other issues that she has in her life — anxiety, depression, stuff like that. But the tools just aren’t working, you know? It’s just not logical, and so it can make it really hard, but she isn’t.”
Tisdale and French got married in 2014. They have two children together — Jupiter, 5, and Emerson, 2.
With his latest endeavor, French hopes to create a safe space for his guests to have open dialogue that his listeners can relate to.
“Having some of these conversations, I’ve seen people going through things, people that I love, people that I don’t even know, people that totally disagree with me in every way that they’re going through,” French explained. “Something and that they need a place to be able to have conversations like this without any judgment, without any bias or shame, and just talk about this stuff.”
“It’s been honestly super transformative and really fun, actually as weird as that sounds, because these are heavy conversations. It’s been really fun and inspiring.”
