Ashley Tisdale Is Turning Her Toxic Mom Group Drama Into a Netflix Show
Ashley Tisdale French wrote an essay about leaving her toxic mom group in January. Six months later she's turning it into a Netflix comedy.
Toxic Moms is now in development at the streamer, with Ali Wong and writer Sabrina Jalees both attached to the project. Jalees, known for her work on Mating Season and Search Party, will write the series. All three will executive produce.
Tisdale French confirmed the news on Instagram Thursday with a Deadline report and a caption that pretty much said everything: "I guess we all can be a little toxic."
The show is described as a half-hour comedy about a new mom who stumbles into a circle of wealthy mothers with a darker side — inspired directly by Tisdale French's own experience navigating exactly that.
Where the Idea Actually Came From
Back in January, Tisdale French published an essay called "Breaking Up with My Toxic Mom Group" through The Cut and her personal Substack. In it she described watching a group of mom friends gradually turn into something that felt a lot more like high school than she expected.
She wrote about noticing conversations that turned negative when certain people weren't around, discovering group text chains that didn't include everyone, and finding out about hangouts she hadn't been invited to through social media photos — three or four times. "After the third or fourth time of seeing social media photos of everyone else at a hangout that I didn't get invited to, it felt like I wasn't really part of the group after all," she wrote.
The essay went viral almost immediately — and so did the speculation. Readers started connecting dots to photos of Tisdale French with a group that included Hilary Duff, Meghan Trainor, Mandy Moore, and food influencer Gaby Dalkin. None of the people in those photos commented at the time, but Mandy Moore eventually addressed it on Andy Cohen's show, calling the situation "very upsetting."
"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," Moore said.
Tisdale French shares daughters Jupiter Iris, 5, and Emerson Clover, 1, with husband Christopher French.
She's Got a Lot Going On Right Now
Toxic Moms isn't the only project Tisdale French has in the pipeline. She's also set to star in the CBS comedy You're Only Young Twice, which was announced in February. That show follows her character Emily and a friend who got married and had a baby in high school, then hit 35, became empty nesters, decided to get divorced, and jumped back into dating while co-parenting.
Two shows in development at once, both rooted in distinctly female experiences — one about the messy, competitive world of wealthy mom culture, one about what happens when women reclaim their lives in their mid-thirties. It's a busy year for the High School Musical alum, and the mom group essay that sparked the controversy is clearly doing more work for her career than any of the women in those photos probably expected.
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