Ashley Tisdale French has scored a role in a new comedy about coparenting.
Deadline reported on Friday, February 27 that the actress, 40, will star in upcoming CBS comedy, You’re Only Young Twice. Tisdale French will also executive produce the comedy, according to the outlet.
The series, which will be Tisdale French’s first acting role in six years, will follow her character Emily and her ex Alex, who got married in high school after Emily got pregnant. Now that the pair’s child has grown up and is off to college, Emily and Alex (both now aged 35) start fresh as newly divorced empty nesters.
Tisdale French posted a screenshot of the Deadline article via her Instagram on Friday and captioned the post, “I told my agent I was retired in acting and he said… umm no you’re not 🤷🏼♀️”
The new role comes after the High School Musical star ruffled feathers in January by blasting her mom group as “toxic” and writing a personal essay for The Cut as well as a Substack post detailing her decision to walk away.
In the piece, she called out the group and revealed she had ultimately quit it after feeling ostracized.
While she didn’t name any of the other moms involved in the group, many of her fans believed it to be the mom group she shared with other celebrity moms, such as Meghan Trainor, Mandy Moore and Hilary Duff. (Tisdale French’s representative denied this at the time.)
Ashley Tisdale French. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Bush’s Beans® )
“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,” Tisdale French wrote at the time. “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. 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 described parting ways with the other mom by texting the group that it felt “too high school for me, and I don’t want to take part in it anymore.”
Ashley Tisdale French was once the queen of Disney Channel, making audiences laugh across The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and the High School Musical franchise. In the years since her tenure at the Mouse House ended, Tisdale French has reframed her career while balancing motherhood. Tisdale French married her husband, Christopher French, in […]
During an appearance on the Wednesday, February 25, episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, Duff claimed people didn’t have to “connect very many dots” to figure out which mom group Tisdale French was referring to.
“I felt really sad. I honestly felt really sad. I was pretty, pretty taken aback and felt just sad,” Duff, 38, said of Tisdale French’s claims. “I have so many groups of friends. I’m so lucky.”
The Lizzie McGuire alum added, “It sucks to read something that’s not true, and it sucks on behalf of six women and all of their lives.”
Earlier this month, Kaley Cuoco, who is part of a different mom group, took a swipe at Tisdale French for the essay.
“I mean, if you don’t like being part of a group, just leave, baby,” Cuoco, 40, said while appearing on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen on February 5. “Do we have to talk about it?”
