"The View "Hosts Question How Ashley Tisdale Handled Her 'Toxic' Mom Group Drama: 'Why Can't You Just Leave?' Bailey RichardsJanuary 11, 2026 at 7:44 AM 0 Charles Sykes/Bravo via Getty;The View/Youtube Ashley Tisdale French; Sara Haines on 'The View' The View hosts reacted to Ashley Tisdale's "toxic" mom friend group drama during the Jan.
- - "The View "Hosts Question How Ashley Tisdale Handled Her 'Toxic' Mom Group Drama: 'Why Can't You Just Leave?'
Bailey RichardsJanuary 11, 2026 at 7:44 AM
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Charles Sykes/Bravo via Getty;The View/Youtube
Ashley Tisdale French; Sara Haines on 'The View' -
The View hosts reacted to Ashley Tisdale's "toxic" mom friend group drama during the Jan. 10 episode of The Weekend View
The co-hosts questioned the way the actress handled her exit from the group (with a text and personal essay in The Cut)
Said Ana Navarro: "Why can't you just leave the conversation, and get it out of your head and out of your life?"
Ashley Tisdale's viral falling-out with her mom friend group has made it to The View.
The actress and business owner, 40, made headlines after discussing her decision to leave her "toxic" group of mom friends in a personal essay published in The Cut on Jan. 1. Discussing the viral essay on The Weekend View on Saturday, Jan. 10, co-host Sara Haines and others criticized how the mom of two handled the situation — and accused her of the same "high school" behavior she denounced.
In her viral essay, Tisdale wrote that after multiple instances of exclusion in the mom group, she sent a text to the group chat that read, "This is too high school for me and I don't want to take part in it anymore."
After Joy Behar asked her co-hosts if they would announce their departure from the group in the same way, Haines, 48, argued that the High School Musical star's exit text "feels a little like the high school part," as opposed to the actions of her former group members.
"Like, I would never write to a group and say, like, 'Shame on all of you.' You just drop out," Haines said. "You just go."
"She said at one point that they were leaving her out and things," Haines later explained, "and I tend to think, 'I don't want to be with people leaving me out.' So if they're leaving me out, I've got other people over here. Like, I'm good."
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Ana Navarro agreed, posing several questions to Tisdale: "Why do you have to go through all of these steps? Why can't you just leave the conversation, and get it out of your head and out of your life?"
Navarro also hilariously cited co-host Whoopi Goldberg, who was not in the episode, as an example, sharing that she often leaves The View group chat. "That's true, Whoopi does do that," Sunny Hostin agreed, as the hosts laughed together.
Hilary Duff/Instagram
Ashley Tisdale with her alleged group of mom friends in July 2022
Alyssa Farah Griffin offered similar commentary, acknowledging that moms can be "toxic" in scenarios like that described by Tisdale, but arguing that the focus should remain on the mothers' children.
The co-host, who is pregnant and expecting her first baby, said, "Toxic mom culture is a thing. I've heard about it from so many of my girlfriends. But I think that you also have to be introspective and remember, like … my baby's not even arrived yet, and I'm already so aware of, like ... my time is consumed with him."
"And if I don't get back to a girlfriend, if I don't respond to a text, it's not personal. It's not high school, it's not me being petty," Griffin continued. "Or if I seated you at one part of the table and not another, it's just because my focus is my child right now."
In her viral essay, which expanded on an earlier blog post titled "You're Allowed to Leave Your Mom Group," Tisdale wrote: "If a mom group consistently leaves you feeling hurt, drained or left out, it's not the mom group for you. Choosing to step away doesn't make you mean or judgmental. It makes you honest with yourself. It's also worth remembering that friendships, like all relationships, have seasons."
MICHAEL TRAN/AFP via Getty
Ashley Tisdale in 2023
While Tisdale did not name the women from her former friend group in her essay, fans quickly zeroed in on past photos showing her spending time with a group that included Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore, Meghan Trainor and others. (A representative for Tisdale denied that the women were the subject of her writing in a statement to TMZ.)
According to a source close to the mom group, there was "a misalignment of values that Ashley decided to make public." The source told PEOPLE: "Friends naturally drift apart. It didn't warrant a dramatic breakup text."
on People
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Source: Entertainment
Published: January 11, 2026 at 12:36AM on Source: ANDY MAG
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