Mandy Moore Would’ve Handled the Ashley French Mom Group Drama Differently

Mom drama doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it lives on and on like playground rumors. Mandy Moore addresses Ashley French’s essay in The Cut, in which French talked about breaking up with her mom group, which included Hilary Duff and Moore. “It’s wild to have anybody talk about your life, and I know Hilary has sort of mentioned this too. It’s like we both have grown up in this business and had people dissect who we are and the choices we make and all of that, but this was something altogether different and decidedly way more upsetting,” she told Andy Cohen in an interview on May 18. “It just cuts to the core.” In the essay, French called her mom group “toxic” for excluding her from group activities. Moore felt hurt that French compared their group to high school mean girls. “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 continued. “I’d say that was the biggest takeaway, sort of the shock of like, ‘Wow.’”

Moore feels that if roles were reversed, she would not have done the same thing. “It’s not always like the most comfortable of situations, but I think that’s where I sort of differed in feeling like I wouldn’t have handled the situation this way,” she concluded. “I think the biggest takeaway from that whole ridiculous debacle is that I feel like it just sort of it perpetuates this silly trope that women can’t be supportive of one another and that we’re inherently petty and that we’re inherently out to one-up each other, and I have not felt that one iota since becoming a parent.”