It seems sometimes like we’re subject to every vagary of some reality-television executive’s imagination (Storage wars! Cake wars! Actual wars!) except the projects we actually want. To wit: Ashley French’s (née Tisdale) allegedly toxic, celebrity-studded mom group, about which the actress wrote a compelling (if somewhat vague) piece for The Cut this week, has yet to make it to my TV screen, and all I can ask is…why?
In the piece, French outlines her falling-out with a group of Los Angeles moms with whom she forged a friendship after welcoming her first child during the COVID pandemic, writing: “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. I was starting to feel frozen out of the group, noticing every way that they seemed to exclude me.” Sad, yes, but at the risk of undervaluing French’s feelings, I absolutely need to know who the other members of said mom group are!
Speculation has abounded online that two of the moms included in said group are Mandy Moore and Hilary Duff, which French’s reps have denied, of course. There’s also gossip flying around that the rift between French and her friends might have come as a result of French’s alleged right-wing politics (which she has also denied in the past). Honestly, I think we, as a society, need to work this one out on the reality-TV remix and let Andy Cohen pull some of the strings behind the scenes. It’s giving The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, only at the Erewhon tonic bar instead of the soda shop!
