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Dylan Efron is coming to Ashley Tisdale French’s defense amid her ongoing mom group drama.
Dylan, 33, whose older brother Zac Efron starred in the High School Musical movies with Tisdale French, was quizzed about the topic during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen on Wednesday, January 21.
“I try to stay out of that, so I don’t know too much,” Dylan said. “All I know is, Ashley, since I was a kid, she’s been so sweet to me. So I can’t envision her doing anything malicious to the mom group. Hopefully it’s just a misunderstanding. I honestly don’t know what’s going on, though.”
“Seems like more than a misunderstanding,” host Andy Cohen weighed in.
Dylan added, “I honestly don’t know what happened. All I can say is she’s been so sweet. She came to Dancing With the Stars to support me. I can’t see where this drama would come from. She’s so sweet.”
Indeed, Tisdale French, 40, and High School Musical director Kenny Ortega were on hand to support Dylan while he was competing on Dancing With the Stars season 34 last October.
The former Disney Channel actress has found herself embroiled in social media speculation after penning a January 1 essay for The Cut about leaving a mom friendship group that she described as toxic.
Tisdale French did not name any of the moms in her friendship circle in particular, but she has in the past documented playdates with other celebrities, including Mandy Moore, Meghan Trainor and Hilary Duff, all of whom also have young children. At the time, Tisdale French’s representative denied that her essay was about Moore, Trainor and Duff.
Ashley Tisdale French set off a firestorm with her once-tight circle of celebrity moms after she abruptly left the group and proceeded to write an essay about former friends’ “toxic” behavior. “The root of the issues was that some of the women just became closer friends with each other, and Ashley started to feel left […]
In the piece, titled “Breaking Up With My Toxic Mom Group,” Tisdale, wrote, “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. … I told myself it was all in my head, and it wasn’t a big deal,” Tisdale French continued. “And yet, I could sense a growing distance between me and the other members of the group, who seemed to not even care that I wasn’t around much.”
Tisdale French said she exited the group after texting her fellow moms that “this is too high school for me, and I don’t want to take part in it anymore.”
“It didn’t exactly go over well,” the actress shared. “Some of the others tried to smooth things over. One sent flowers, then ignored me when I thanked her for them. … To be clear, I have never considered the moms to be bad people. (Maybe one.) But I do think our group dynamic stopped being healthy and positive — for me, anyway.”
Trainor previously denied involvement in Tisdale French’s mom group issues. Moore and Duff have not publicly commented on the drama.
