Hilary Duff’s new album, luck…or something dropped on February 20. Before the album came out, Hilary’s name was already in the news thanks to Ashley Tisdale’s essay in The Cut about leaving a “toxic” mom group full of “mean girls” who had begun leaving her out of their group hangs. In the aftermath, both Hilary’s and Ashley’s husbands, friends, and (possibly former) group member Meghan Trainor all made public comments or social media posts about it.
Hilary has stayed quiet until now. During a guest appearance on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, Hilary finally addressed Momgate. She also talked about her estranged relationship with her older sister, Haylie Duff, who publicly sided with Ashley, and took us on a trip down memory lane to comment on some of her own ghosts of gossip’s past.
Momgate: “I felt really sad. I honestly felt really sad. I was pretty taken aback and felt just sad. I love, I have so many groups of friends. I’m so lucky. Motherhood has brought on, like I have my core group of friends who have been my ride or die for 20 years, 10 to 20 years, and I have tons of different groups of mom friends because I have four kids, you know? So, I think I just was like, ‘Whoa.’ It sucks to read something that’s not true and it sucks on behalf of like six women and all of their lives.”
Her old feud with Lindsay Lohan over Aaron Carter: [Duff] admitted she intentionally crashed the Freaky Friday premiere in 2003 to spite her “childhood nemesis.” However, their once hostile relationship is now water under the bridge. “But now it’s so many years later, like who cares?” she shared. “It does not matter. Also, Lindsay came up to me at a club once and was like, ‘Are we good?’ And I was like, ‘We’re good.’ She was like, ‘Let’s take a shot.’ I was like, ‘OK.’”
Her estrangement with Haylie: “I think there was no way for me to make a record after 10 years and not dig into what those 10 years have looked like, you know? [A]nd the big things that have happened and that affect me and that make me who I am. And unfortunately a lot of that has been like not great stuff and that’s life. People have known everybody in my life since I was on Lizzie McGuire. They know my mom, my sister, and my dad. Like we have a small family. People are interested in that for some reason. And it’s really sad, you know, kind of like where we are right now…And scary to share it because of, like, the internet, but important for me, like I’m just saying how it feels for me.”
On the dive bar BJ she sings about in ‘Roommates’: “The song is meant to be polarizing. [I]t’s not meant to like be raunchy or get attention because of what I’m saying. Like it’s a plea. And I think that’s relatable to women. And so, you know, I have never given head in the back of a dive bar, sadly. There’s always time. But you get to take like lyrical liberties when you’re writing a song and you’re creating art.”
I think Hilary’s response to Ashley’s essay was well-crafted. I’d love to know what parts she felt were untrue. Perhaps that’s a reveal for another time and/or another autobiographical song. The general attitude after Ashley’s essay caused such a huge public stir was that people grow apart and that there is usually always more than one side to a story. The fact that so many people who knew Hilary, Ashley, and the other women in the mom group declined to take a side reaffirmed this for me. Hilary also claimed that she didn’t know that Matthew was going to make that Instagram post mocking Ashley, but appreciated that he went to bat for her.
Hilary’s remarks about Lindsay Lohan have also been getting a lot of attention online. I remember Hilary and Lilo’s feud over Aaron, but had forgotten all of that drama surrounding the Freaky Friday premiere. Maybe Chad Michael Murray really did invite her, but she knew what she was doing! Of course they would end their beef by doing shots at a club together. That convo brought back memories of all of the fighting that went down over Wilder Valderrama, too. That early-2000s gossip period really was insane.
Hilary Duff gets REAL and emotional about the Ashley Tisdale article about the "toxic mom group".
She said she felt "SAD and USED." She addresses that the timing felt not great, because it was exactly when she was making a comeback and having a resurgence on the scene. pic.twitter.com/3dlh0NQKZZ
— y2k (@y2kpopart) February 25, 2026
photos credit: popculture/Backgrid
Wilmer Valderrama omg thats a name i have not heard in years. Him and Terry Richardson are surely due an exposè.
I wonder what kind of message her sister thought she would be sending by immediately friending Tisdale? Like she comes off so tacky and petty.
Being estranged from my sister would devastate me, so I understand her pain. I hope that whatever happened between them can be resolved. Great sisterhood is a blessing every woman should experience.