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Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast from Mamma Maya. Welcome to The Spill, your daily pop culture fix.
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Speaker 2: I'm Cassena La Kitch and I'm Tina Bag.
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Speaker 1: We have Tina with us today because Laura, unfortunately is still unwell. But today on the show, Ashley Tisdale has called out her toxic Mum's group and we have to talk about it because it's so juicy and messy and heated. Rivalry is the hottest show over the last couple of weeks and we're obsessed with it. So we're going to talk about that.
00:00:43
Speaker 3: But first first, we have something very exciting to talk about, very exciting to me and our producer Minisha, and we'll see how many other spills. I have to talk to you guys about something that happened yesterday at the Critics Choice Awards, which is that The Bold Type, which is such a big TV show in my world. Also in Laura Brodneck Nisha d one of the stars. She was on the Spill at one point. Laura did and No Filter with her last year. She's incredible Ozzie actress. We love her so much. The other two stars of The Bold Type are Katie Stevens and Meghan Fahie. Meghan you would know from Like The White Lotus Siirrons. Recently, she's also in Rose Burns new movie, which is why she was at the Critics' Choice Awards.
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Speaker 2: She's a great time.
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Speaker 3: So she was on the red carpet and she was doing an interview with Refinery twenty nine, and for some random reason, she decided to say that she is really lobbying for a bold type movie and that she thinks about it every day.
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Speaker 1: I'm really lobbying for a bold type movie. Every day I think about it. We talk about it a lot.
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Speaker 3: I just feel like if Sex and the City did it, we should be doing it too.
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Speaker 1: Putting that out there.
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Speaker 3: I could not have been more excited. It was the first thing I saw when I woke up. This is the news of my life for me.
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Speaker 1: Okay, So I haven't watched The Bold Type. Sorry, it's on my radar, but I just haven't gotten to the point of watching it. However, I do know that it's hugely popular. I have heard wonderful things about it. Now I know. Katie Stevens actually told people back in August in People magazine. Back in August that she was keen for it as well. So this is like I feel like they're planting seeds for people.
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Speaker 2: They're planting little seeds.
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Speaker 3: And what Meghan said was that like, if Sex and the City got to do like a movie reboots, so should the Bold Type. And now the Bold Type to a generation of like millennial and maybe gen Z women is kind of their Sex and the City.
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Speaker 2: Like it was a.
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Speaker 3: Trio of friends in New York. They worked in a magazine. It was called Scarlet and it was kind of like a Cosmo esque magazine, and it's sort of like their friendships, their relationships, their work lives, and it was kind of like the closest thing we had to a Sex and the City, Like twenty seventeen when it came out.
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Speaker 1: Would you put it in the same genre as Younger?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, And they air around a similar time to Younger and that was honestly like the prime time and like that genre to me is just like millennial optimism. Like it's just like Rah Rah band hippie music, and like girls say like girl Boss quotes and like their wardrobes being really similar, Like they've got that vibe about it.
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Speaker 1: Do you know what's quite funny about that though, because does it still hold up? Have you watched it recently?
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Speaker 3: I did rewatch it recently because we've been recommending it to a lot of the girls in the office who've never seen it. And I think, if you work in media, like this is the show for you. So I rewatched it, and I have to caveat that it's a bit cringe, but you just embrace the cringe.
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Speaker 1: But I think the reason is because I rewatched Younger recently and that was super cringe. And I think it's because millennials now aren't the young, hot, up and coming generation anymore, Like we're old now.
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Speaker 2: It's so earnest as well.
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Speaker 1: Yes, it's like, oh millennial, the magazine is this is why we're so cool and that we're not anymore.
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Speaker 3: No, we're not, And like it's so starkly different to like obviously like another millennial show Girls, But a lot of gen Z shows are leaning towards that kind of girls type of content. Now, where is these shows the bold type Younger like they were just so earnest and wholesome and like uplifting and like my friends and I who were worked in magazines at the time when it came out. If we wanted to be like a bit whimsical for the day or like wear a nice outfit or go to an event, we'd call it bold typing. Yeah, we'd be we're going to bold type today, like we're gonna go out and like live alive, Girl bus girl bars, And it just had that vibe which was so ridiculous.
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Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, those three.
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Speaker 3: Women have remained really really good friends. And the show end did in like the early twenty twenties. They had a little production break because of COVID and then they came and wrapped it up, but it was a little bit short, rapped nicely.
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Speaker 2: You could leave it there.
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Speaker 3: But all three actresses are really good friends. They're all still starring in really great stuff like Asha was in Apple Sight of Vinegar on Netflix last year. Megan's career has taken off, Katie's in a show called Providence Falls, so like they're all still doing well. But I think because their friendship has lasted, like you rarely see that with shows now where they are still best friends in real life. So I think a lot of fans would just die to see them reunite on screen and bring these girls back to life.
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Speaker 1: It sounds like there's an appetite there and maybe they can kind of lessen some of the cringe and we can millennials could be cool again.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, they can be like cool adult millennial versions of themselves.
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Speaker 2: I'd love to see that, Nana.
00:04:49
Speaker 1: There is a show that has been overtaking my feed at the moment and it is called Heated Rivalry. Now, Tina, I know that you are a big, big fan of this. I'm only about halfway through the season, so I want to tell everyone about this show because it's incredible, But I think you need to give us like the tail dr Yes.
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Speaker 3: So I am like a woman completely bewitched by this show. Over the Christmas brag. If I wasn't talking about it, I was listening to the soundtrack. I was sending people memes and tiktoks. I have been taking like a really grassroots approach to spreading the law of this show. It doesn't need my help. Millions of people around the world are watching it. But I have been shorter text like every single friend I have individually and be like, are you watching this show? Okay, great, here's fifty edits for you to enjoy it. I love it so bloody much. It's captivated me. But the show, for those who don't know, is airing on HBO Max in Australia. It's actually a Crave original which is like a Canadian production company, but it's airing on HBO Max. It is based on a gay hockey romance series by Rachel Reid. So there are six books in her series and they each kind of center on like a new duo who are falling in love. However, all of the characters kind of like carry through and they intertwine and all of that. So for the TV show, they've decided to focus on Ilia Rosanoff, which is played by Connor's Story, who is just the dreamiest dream break you've ever seen, and Shane Hollander, who's played by Hudson Williams, also the dreamiert dreamboat you have ever seen in your life.
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Speaker 2: And the story goes.
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Speaker 3: That Ilia and Hudson are like young hockey prodigies. They meet sort of in the season before they get drafted to the major league.
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Speaker 2: They have a.
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Speaker 3: Little romance, they start to feel out that they might be interested in each other. Some things happen, some kisses potentially, and then they get signed to professional hockey teams. So Shane plays for the Montreal Metros fictional team, and Ilia Rosanov plays for the Boston Raiders, also a fictional team. This is essentially like what if we just did the NHL, the National Hockey League in the US and Canada, and just like pretended it wasn't that for legal reasons. So these two boys basically enter into like a decade long situation ship which sounds like a nightmare, but it is actually filled with like steamy sex scenes and deeply romantic yearning and text exchanges and like staring at each other across clubs and romantic declarations. And so the series sort of like charts this story while also introducing us to a couple of the other key players from the other books, but it's mostly focused on Ilia and Shane, our two beauties.
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Speaker 1: So this series has really it's kind of come out of nowhere. It was very cheaply made, It wasn't a big budget production. We have two unknown, relative unknown actors in the lead roles, and so it kind of came out towards the end of last year in Canada and the state. We've got it here now. All the episodes are out but this is just it has been such a runaway hit, and I feel like we've got a couple of like theories as to why that is. Because if you think about the premise of it a gay hockey love story, hockey could not care less, don't care about hockey. Never seen a game in my life, I don't know how to skate.
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Speaker 3: And I think that put a lot of people off at first, because they've really thought the hockey was like a much bigger part of this story. It's not if you like hockey, great, if you don't, it doesn't matter.
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Speaker 1: It's completely not part of the story in an important way. But these two are so hot and literally first episode I'm not going to spoil it, but first episode it is so steamy, probably the most steamy, saucy sex scenes I have ever seen in a production. Yeah, and it's very like Clutch My Pearls.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it's like one of the first adaptations of sort of a smutty romantic book that I've seen where they've actually like gone hell for leather on the sex scenes. They're also quite romantic throughout the series, Like it's not all just like also sexy. There's a lot of romance too, but they've actually really committed to bringing the page to the screen, and that doesn't always happen with romance adaptations.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, And I.
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Speaker 3: Feel like that's also a big part of why this has been so successful is it's part of that sort of new wave of romcom formula where they're doing a book that's been really big across fandoms and has an inbuilt audience, like maybe it's on book talk, maybe it's like in book clubs with mums around the country. That's where Reese Witherspoon found her niche for her adaptations. But it means you've got like an inbuilt audience. And so when this was announced, fans were like, oh my god, So I knew about this before it aired, only because I'm in those spaces where people are like, this book I love is getting adapted, So you've got that already. Then you lean into the fact that you cast these unknown actors. So the two actors had like I think Connor had like five thousand or seven thousand followers on Instagram when the show started and had been working as a model and an actor for years. I think Hudson had like also a few thousand. Also an actor. He was in a Hallmark movie like This Year where he has one line that was his other big credit of the years.
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Speaker 2: So it's like they.
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Speaker 3: Were not known people, and what you can do with that is really really see them as these characters. I had so many people message me and go, wait, Illi is not Russian in real life because you didn't know who they were, so you fall in love with them as these characters. And then you add on top of that, just like a banging soundtrack that lends itself really well to edits to Spotify playlist, to like singing along in the shower, and you have that sort of like perfect recipe for a viral hit.
00:09:53
Speaker 1: And it's been really interesting because people are very confused about the fact that this show is very very popular with women, very popular with women. People like what and Hudson Williams has said he did an interview and he said women, but really everyone is really tough of emotionally unavailable men. And to see people open up in that way and characters show up in that way on TV is a rarity. And I think we're ready for it, and I love that. I think that that's such a big part of it. It's not necessarily about they're a same sex couple. It's the romance, it's the openness of these characters. And something that I think is really really key here is that the power dynamic between the two is on equal footing. Think about fifty Shades of Gray for example, that power dynamic. There is such a huge disparity between the two this the two of them. While Ilia still is a little bit more powerful in terms of his forwardness in his sexuality, but as a general rule, the two of them are on equal footing. They're both successful, they're both talented, they're both hiding this part of their sexuality from the rest of their teammates, and it is so titillating.
00:11:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, it got a little bit of backlash the sort of how he said it, but I completely saw what he was going for. But the creator, Jacob Tiney sort of touched on that and said that, like, the reason that a lot of straight women might like this series is what you're saying of seeing these two people who are both in the same sort of circumstance in society, like men and women have different dynamics in straight relationships, Like it's just not vis fact of the world that we live in so women are concerned about things like danger in relationships or like being seen as less than the men that they're with. Whereas you take two men and you put them in a relationship, they face a lot of similar obstacles. Obviously, this is very different as well, because you're talking about two closeted gay players in a league that is probably not going to be okay with that.
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Speaker 2: That's a part of their story. But it's really.
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Speaker 3: Interesting that so many straight women have loved this series, and I do think it partly comes down to the fact that so much romance content is made for straight women, so many romance novels, so many rom coms, Like the main audience of a lot of that content is straight women because it's made for straight women. But then outside of that, Hudson Williams has also spoken, I think in the same interview as Connor, he was saying, you know, this isn't just straight who are watching it. It's also queer women, it's also trans women. A lot of women are loving this because it's also just seeing that portrayal of like a soft love, a yearning love, that sort of romance that we don't see in the real world. It's like Bridgitton where Bridgeston' is not realistic to the time period, but it's so nice to see Oh my god, that man he just loves that girl so damn much. It's nice to see someone loving someone this intensely and having this kind of romance.
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Speaker 1: There's been this trend on TikTok about men going, oh, what is the female equivalent to Megan Fox in Transformers opening the hood of the car? Like do do you know that scene? You know what I'm talking about? So that is like that was like the pinnacle of hot for men, you know, and men are like, oh, okay, so the female equivalent must be like a really buff man, and it's like, no, no, the female equivalent the female gaze is stolen looks. It's passion. It's a little hand touch, genuine connection. It's those little looks and those like the foot the foot under the table thing in like the first episode. Yeah, oh my god, yeah so sexy.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think again to expose myself. I'm in the TikTok forums and the Reddit forums. I'm all the way in there. But those are the things making the edits. It's like the little feet touches, the little glances of the eyes, like they've really done an amazing job of portraying that sort of yearning and also just like a different kind of gay love story, Like it's just nice to see. I guess in this current moment in Hollywood, more and more gay love stories still making their way to the screen. And at the end of the day, like while there's been a lot of discussion about like this particular show and the relationship that it's portraying, there are so many gay creatives, journalists like podcast hosts who have had the boys on, who have interviewed them, who have just been on TikTok on Instagram speaking about how much they love the show. It's just a really nice, also beautiful representation as well of a beautiful queer love story, Like it's nice. It's nice that the storyline is two people falling in love and that is the central thing holding it together.
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Speaker 1: It's been so interesting since Barbie because I feel like it's like Hollywood is finally realizing that women will actually pay money and they will bring in dollars at the box office. Because if you think about Hollywood execs, it's going to be primarily men and straight men at the top. Of these organizations who are making these decisions. So as a result, they're kind of taking control of what we watch. Yeah, so it's like it's not for you, but realize that there is a market for that. And this is such a great example of this. Again.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of content decisions in Hollywood are obviously made by straight men off and straight white men. And so the more that we can sort of champion these stories and build them up when they're told from other perspectives, whether that's by straight women, by gay men, by all different types of people, it gives us more variety. And also it's what we want to see. The crowds are there, The millions of people watching are there. And obviously, as I said before, like this show is airing on HBO Max kind of globally, but it wasn't made by them, And HBO exec Casey Boyce said, like, we're going to stay out of it because that's the concern that people have. This has been renewed for a second season. This show was made with like five dollars thirty six days and like a dream and a twinkle in someone's eye, like they had nothing. If you get into the show and you want to go watch behind the scenes footage, like it's a miracle this show looks as good as it does. They really did amazing work with what they had. But Casey was like, we're staying out of it. We're gonna get away from it. Love and we need that more. Like Reese Witherspoon was saying it over the summer, she was like, let us see romance on screens, Like people are yearning for it. They want to spend the money and go to the cinema, they want to get a HBO Mac subscription to watch the show.
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Speaker 2: Just give us more. Yeah, and it's really.
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Speaker 3: Interesting like as well with how much it's taken off, like they committed to it, the cast, the actors, everyone involved.
00:15:39
Speaker 2: I work in social media.
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Speaker 3: Whoever was their social editor on that set was like running it like the Navy. There has been a new edit, a new photo shoot, a new something dropping every single day. They're doing interviews, that are doing podcasts. They're really pushing it out there to the point that yeah, now they both have a million followers and a global smash hit. But they really backed themselves on it too, because they know they have been in every interview saying we knew this would have an audience. We know people want this content and.
00:16:03
Speaker 1: It's so good. Yeah, it's so so if you haven't seen Heated Rivalry yet, I hope that this kind of encouraged you to. It's available on HBO Max now. All six episodes are out. They're about an hour each, so they're like nice and juicy. This is a really good one to get your teeth into.
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Speaker 2: Yes, it's amazing. I hope you will watch it and then we can.
00:16:24
Speaker 3: Talk about it more on the Spella Nana. So something else that we have to talk about today is an essay that dropped on the cut that had almost like I guess every single person that mum and we are talking this morning. It had the group chats going. I'm sure there were many a mum group chat that were heating up over this this morning. It is the article by Ashley Tisdale about the breakup of her mum friendship group.
00:16:47
Speaker 1: This article is so piping hot. I've been down a massive rabbit hole going through all of this. So basically this article, she is comparing a mum's group that she was a part of when her first child was little, that she had back in the pandemic. She's comparing this particular mum's group to.
00:17:05
Speaker 3: High school, which is apt because famous for being in high school musical. So like, if anyone's qualified to talk about a high school experience, it's actually dissol sharp.
00:17:12
Speaker 1: Hay is back, yes, and she's got the cut. She's got it okay. So this is the one paragraph that really really struck me. Lately, I've been thinking about how being a new mum has emotional echoes of high school. It's an exciting time for discovery and growth, but it's also a time of feeling vulnerable and unsure. You're thrust into new situations with new people, wondering if they could be the friend who can walk beside you in this new time in your life, and there's no way to know for sure unless you really put yourself out there. And in both cases your hormones are all over the place. I actually think that.
00:17:44
Speaker 2: That's very apt and fair.
00:17:45
Speaker 1: That is super fair. So basically, she's talking about she was feeling excluded in this ms mum group. She was seeing that they were going and doing trips without her, she felt like they were making plans without her, And eventually she basically goes into the mums group and says, I don't feel like I like this anymore. This isn't healthy for me. I'm leaving. That is basically what the article is about. Yep, and people are so into this is because while she didn't mention any names, specifically internet sleuths and basically anybody with an Instagram account has been able to go back and see that she was a part of a celebrity mum group that also included Hillary Duff, Mandy Moore and Megan Trainer and Liam michel I.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: Think that's so juicy.
00:18:30
Speaker 3: It's like a Hollywood Who's who of a guess b list them all.
00:18:33
Speaker 1: It's so good. So we've got these photos and they're all in matching truck suits and these white matching truck suits. They're all smiling, makeup free.
00:18:41
Speaker 2: You know.
00:18:41
Speaker 1: I love these girls. These are my goals, Like I love them. Thank you so much for the support. But now none of them are following each other. So Hillary Duff doesn't follow Actually Tearsdale anymore, Many More doesn't follow her anymore, and Acshally Tisdale doesn't follow them either, so people have now deduced that there has been some sort of rift between the two of them. Between Ashley Tisdale and the rest of the group. Right, Actually Tiss is inferring in this article. That is because they were bullying her and being a mean girl.
00:19:12
Speaker 3: Yes, there's two things that are so celebrity here that like no one else is getting away with. One thing is like, regular people can unfollow people and like it's fine, But if you're a celebrity and you make the choice to unfollow someone, it's a statement. Absolutely you're putting out there about the status of your relationship because people will notice, Like people like you and me, we're gonna go look at that, and we're gonna see that they're not following each other and we're going to go that's strange. The second thing is imagine being like, you know what, I feel a little bit petty about this thing that happened to me, and I think the answer is going to the cut and writing a first person essay. A unique experience that only a handful of celebrities can do. But it's a very fun one, I guess to play with.
00:19:47
Speaker 1: It's also so funny because the Mum group drama is actually super relatable. I have been a part of Mum's groups. They can be pretty toxic and particularly mum like Facebook groups and all of that thing, because mum life can be so all consuming, and it can also be very very judgmental, like are your breastfeeding is it formula? How you are you sleep training and your baby? Like everybody has an opinion and it can become really really icky and toxic. So a lot of people have responded to this particular article being like, oh my god, I relate to this so hard. This is super relatable. I had this happen to me. So it's almost quite funny. It's like those old people magazine articles of celebs. They're just like, they're just like us.
00:20:29
Speaker 2: They also fight, they.
00:20:31
Speaker 1: Also have mum drama.
00:20:32
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:20:33
Speaker 1: But where this gets even more juicy and interesting, it's not the fact that Ashley Tisdell has been quote unquote bullied by this particular mum's group, or or in fact that this relationship of grown adult women has collapsed. Because look, female friendships sometimes can be a bit more short lived, and they can be some really challenging moments in a female friendship.
00:20:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, people can be in your life for a reason or a season.
00:20:54
Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
00:20:55
Speaker 2: Oh, I love that.
00:20:56
Speaker 1: That's so cute.
00:20:56
Speaker 2: I didn't come up with it, but I'll pretend.
00:20:58
Speaker 1: Okay, no, you should, just sure I liked it. So there's been some speculation that is potentially because of the politics of Ashley Tale. I was in a very deep rabbit hole and one reddita set I noticed a shift. Around the time of the fires in California last year. Mandy's family was affected by the fires. Her, her husband, and their children all lived with Hillary for a couple of months due to the fire damage in their home. Other members of Mandy's family completely lost their homes. I remember actually being super tone deaf around this, posting about how grateful she was that she wasn't affected by the fires, and continued talking about plans to build her vacation home. She wasn't pictured with the mum group again after this. I have a feeling that that affected her relationship within the mum group.
00:21:42
Speaker 2: Interesting.
00:21:43
Speaker 3: So in the article, she says that what started happening to her was she would find herself not invited to dinners, or she would find herself not invited to get away, and that the thing would always be from the rest of the women in this mum group, like but you're always invited or you're always welcome you can always come and that is something that a lot of people have like real world experience.
00:21:59
Speaker 1: Of Yeah, and it might be a way of just trying to like not be super confrontational, but also wanting to separate themselves from this person. So the other layer to all of this. And Laura and I had did a deep dive on this last year about the relationship between Haley and Hillary Doff, So it has sort of been documented that Hailey and Hillary Duff have had a massive falling out because of Hailey's politics potentially. Now what's interesting, Ashley Tisdale still follows Hailey Duff and Hailey follows Ashley, so people are kind of making it could be tenuous but a connection between those two and suggesting that perhaps her more conservative politics are part of the reason that this friendship breakdown has been happening.
00:22:46
Speaker 3: That's really interesting that they're still following each other, and I think there's a lot of comments coming up on this article now suggesting that it could be because of her conservative beliefs, So it would check out. Likewise, if Hailey's also in maybe potentially a similar situation of not being on speaking terms with Hillary, that that would also affect Ashley if they were also aligned politically.
00:23:05
Speaker 1: It's just it's so juicye. I think the reason people are finding it so interesting as well is because it's this peak behind celebrity life that isn't so glossy. It is like her, Yeah, it's something that everybody experiences, whether it's in a work relationship, whether it's in your own mum group, whether it's with your family. It feels so titillating.
00:23:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, And at the moment, this is all a bit of like he said, she said, she said, she said, because it's just sort of fans pulling strings together. But I would never discount fans doing that because more often than not, like they kind of uncover a little something that snowballs in the news cycle. But what is really interesting here is like, you didn't have to do this, You didn't have to write an essay about the breakdown of your friendship group and sort of bring this all up. But it has already quite predictably started to cycle back around people going well, what did you do, Ashley Tisdale. So it's like it's started as going, oh, juice drama. Everyone's interested, what's going on? What did those mean women do to her? And it's already circled back to did you do something to cause this problem? And people are digging up little receipts and things like that. So it's very interesting and it will be very interesting to see should anyone comment on this. Do they all just like ignore it? What's going to happen next? It's very interesting, is like the first life cycles of like a new drama.
00:24:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so funny because when I first read it, I really related to a lot of the things that she said in the article. I really did, because I do think a lot of that is very, very relatable for a new mother, because it is a very difficult time of your life where you are so all consumed with this child, with this baby and keeping this thing alive, and you're awake at all hours of the night, and it is such an isolating experience. But the great thing about a mum's group is that at three am, when you're breastfeeding, you can almost guarantee that somebody in that group is awake. And there were so many times during the newborn phase with my children where I was texting with this group at two o'clock in the morning and there was someone there to listen to you. Yeah, and it kind of does help a lot make that sort of new motherhood experience less isolating. However, there is also a topicity to it sometimes because of these differing views, and it can become very mean girl, it can become very high school.
00:25:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean, look, I have zero experience or understanding of what any of that is like, but I do imagine that that would be one of the most intense kinds of friendships to have.
00:25:22
Speaker 2: Whether it's the supportive kind or the toxic kind.
00:25:24
Speaker 3: Like if you're all in this together in one of what is from the outside looking in, got to be one of the hardest times of any woman's life who's just had a child. Being in a mum's group would theoretically be very supportive. But if those women were not supportive of you, or if there was tension, I could imagine that that is a toxic environment to be in at times. And that seems to be what has resonated here from this article for people.
00:25:44
Speaker 1: From my experience, the issues often occur with differences in parenting styles.
00:25:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:25:50
Speaker 1: Interesting, when people have an opinion about their parenting, they are one hundred percent right. It is got you you you know you can't do that. Are your sleep training? That's so cruel? You can't do that? Yeah, oh, formula, don't you know that breast is best? You shouldn't use that because it's toxic. Are you still using a dummy? Oh my god? Screen time is so bad and it descends into chaos.
00:26:13
Speaker 3: And look, allegedly you add into that mix potentially different political views, which can also lead into how people choose to parent. That could be a toxic environment and maybe they just didn't want to at the Groove vacation anymore.
00:26:25
Speaker 1: Look, we can continue to speculate, and I'm gonna keep going down a rabbit hole. So if we find anything else on it, we might have to also ask Laura more about the Hailey Hillary stuff because she's so up to date on that law.
00:26:36
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:26:37
Speaker 3: Look, if you guys want to have a listen, go back and check it out, because you guys dove deep into the like you guys spoke about the original creator who sort of did all the pointing out and like crazy mind mapping to figure all of this out. Yeah, there's a lot of juicy drama there between them. Thanks so much for listening to Spill today.
00:26:51
Speaker 1: Guys. Make sure you're following this spill on TikTok and Instagram. We always post some wonderful stuff up on there. We'll be back here in your feed tomorrow morning with Morning Tea, hosted by the wonderful Ash London. This bill is produced by Minisia It's Warren with sound production by Scott Stronach. But bye Bye, Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land. We have recorded this podcast on the Gadigol people of the Oronation. We pay our respects to their elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast from Mamma Maya. Welcome to The Spill, your daily pop culture fix.
00:00:22
Speaker 2: I'm Cassena La Kitch and I'm Tina Bag.
00:00:24
Speaker 1: We have Tina with us today because Laura, unfortunately is still unwell. But today on the show, Ashley Tisdale has called out her toxic Mum's group and we have to talk about it because it's so juicy and messy and heated. Rivalry is the hottest show over the last couple of weeks and we're obsessed with it. So we're going to talk about that.
00:00:43
Speaker 3: But first first, we have something very exciting to talk about, very exciting to me and our producer Minisha, and we'll see how many other spills. I have to talk to you guys about something that happened yesterday at the Critics Choice Awards, which is that The Bold Type, which is such a big TV show in my world. Also in Laura Brodneck Nisha d one of the stars. She was on the Spill at one point. Laura did and No Filter with her last year. She's incredible Ozzie actress. We love her so much. The other two stars of The Bold Type are Katie Stevens and Meghan Fahie. Meghan you would know from Like The White Lotus Siirrons. Recently, she's also in Rose Burns new movie, which is why she was at the Critics' Choice Awards.
00:01:20
Speaker 2: She's a great time.
00:01:22
Speaker 3: So she was on the red carpet and she was doing an interview with Refinery twenty nine, and for some random reason, she decided to say that she is really lobbying for a bold type movie and that she thinks about it every day.
00:01:34
Speaker 1: I'm really lobbying for a bold type movie. Every day I think about it. We talk about it a lot.
00:01:40
Speaker 3: I just feel like if Sex and the City did it, we should be doing it too.
00:01:44
Speaker 1: Putting that out there.
00:01:45
Speaker 3: I could not have been more excited. It was the first thing I saw when I woke up. This is the news of my life for me.
00:01:50
Speaker 1: Okay, So I haven't watched The Bold Type. Sorry, it's on my radar, but I just haven't gotten to the point of watching it. However, I do know that it's hugely popular. I have heard wonderful things about it. Now I know. Katie Stevens actually told people back in August in People magazine. Back in August that she was keen for it as well. So this is like I feel like they're planting seeds for people.
00:02:13
Speaker 2: They're planting little seeds.
00:02:14
Speaker 3: And what Meghan said was that like, if Sex and the City got to do like a movie reboots, so should the Bold Type. And now the Bold Type to a generation of like millennial and maybe gen Z women is kind of their Sex and the City.
00:02:25
Speaker 2: Like it was a.
00:02:26
Speaker 3: Trio of friends in New York. They worked in a magazine. It was called Scarlet and it was kind of like a Cosmo esque magazine, and it's sort of like their friendships, their relationships, their work lives, and it was kind of like the closest thing we had to a Sex and the City, Like twenty seventeen when it came out.
00:02:41
Speaker 1: Would you put it in the same genre as Younger?
00:02:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, And they air around a similar time to Younger and that was honestly like the prime time and like that genre to me is just like millennial optimism. Like it's just like Rah Rah band hippie music, and like girls say like girl Boss quotes and like their wardrobes being really similar, Like they've got that vibe about it.
00:03:00
Speaker 1: Do you know what's quite funny about that though, because does it still hold up? Have you watched it recently?
00:03:04
Speaker 3: I did rewatch it recently because we've been recommending it to a lot of the girls in the office who've never seen it. And I think, if you work in media, like this is the show for you. So I rewatched it, and I have to caveat that it's a bit cringe, but you just embrace the cringe.
00:03:16
Speaker 1: But I think the reason is because I rewatched Younger recently and that was super cringe. And I think it's because millennials now aren't the young, hot, up and coming generation anymore, Like we're old now.
00:03:26
Speaker 2: It's so earnest as well.
00:03:28
Speaker 1: Yes, it's like, oh millennial, the magazine is this is why we're so cool and that we're not anymore.
00:03:33
Speaker 3: No, we're not, And like it's so starkly different to like obviously like another millennial show Girls, But a lot of gen Z shows are leaning towards that kind of girls type of content. Now, where is these shows the bold type Younger like they were just so earnest and wholesome and like uplifting and like my friends and I who were worked in magazines at the time when it came out. If we wanted to be like a bit whimsical for the day or like wear a nice outfit or go to an event, we'd call it bold typing. Yeah, we'd be we're going to bold type today, like we're gonna go out and like live alive, Girl bus girl bars, And it just had that vibe which was so ridiculous.
00:04:02
Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, those three.
00:04:03
Speaker 3: Women have remained really really good friends. And the show end did in like the early twenty twenties. They had a little production break because of COVID and then they came and wrapped it up, but it was a little bit short, rapped nicely.
00:04:14
Speaker 2: You could leave it there.
00:04:15
Speaker 3: But all three actresses are really good friends. They're all still starring in really great stuff like Asha was in Apple Sight of Vinegar on Netflix last year. Megan's career has taken off, Katie's in a show called Providence Falls, so like they're all still doing well. But I think because their friendship has lasted, like you rarely see that with shows now where they are still best friends in real life. So I think a lot of fans would just die to see them reunite on screen and bring these girls back to life.
00:04:38
Speaker 1: It sounds like there's an appetite there and maybe they can kind of lessen some of the cringe and we can millennials could be cool again.
00:04:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, they can be like cool adult millennial versions of themselves.
00:04:47
Speaker 2: I'd love to see that, Nana.
00:04:49
Speaker 1: There is a show that has been overtaking my feed at the moment and it is called Heated Rivalry. Now, Tina, I know that you are a big, big fan of this. I'm only about halfway through the season, so I want to tell everyone about this show because it's incredible, But I think you need to give us like the tail dr Yes.
00:05:10
Speaker 3: So I am like a woman completely bewitched by this show. Over the Christmas brag. If I wasn't talking about it, I was listening to the soundtrack. I was sending people memes and tiktoks. I have been taking like a really grassroots approach to spreading the law of this show. It doesn't need my help. Millions of people around the world are watching it. But I have been shorter text like every single friend I have individually and be like, are you watching this show? Okay, great, here's fifty edits for you to enjoy it. I love it so bloody much. It's captivated me. But the show, for those who don't know, is airing on HBO Max in Australia. It's actually a Crave original which is like a Canadian production company, but it's airing on HBO Max. It is based on a gay hockey romance series by Rachel Reid. So there are six books in her series and they each kind of center on like a new duo who are falling in love. However, all of the characters kind of like carry through and they intertwine and all of that. So for the TV show, they've decided to focus on Ilia Rosanoff, which is played by Connor's Story, who is just the dreamiest dream break you've ever seen, and Shane Hollander, who's played by Hudson Williams, also the dreamiert dreamboat you have ever seen in your life.
00:06:13
Speaker 2: And the story goes.
00:06:14
Speaker 3: That Ilia and Hudson are like young hockey prodigies. They meet sort of in the season before they get drafted to the major league.
00:06:21
Speaker 2: They have a.
00:06:22
Speaker 3: Little romance, they start to feel out that they might be interested in each other. Some things happen, some kisses potentially, and then they get signed to professional hockey teams. So Shane plays for the Montreal Metros fictional team, and Ilia Rosanov plays for the Boston Raiders, also a fictional team. This is essentially like what if we just did the NHL, the National Hockey League in the US and Canada, and just like pretended it wasn't that for legal reasons. So these two boys basically enter into like a decade long situation ship which sounds like a nightmare, but it is actually filled with like steamy sex scenes and deeply romantic yearning and text exchanges and like staring at each other across clubs and romantic declarations. And so the series sort of like charts this story while also introducing us to a couple of the other key players from the other books, but it's mostly focused on Ilia and Shane, our two beauties.
00:07:10
Speaker 1: So this series has really it's kind of come out of nowhere. It was very cheaply made, It wasn't a big budget production. We have two unknown, relative unknown actors in the lead roles, and so it kind of came out towards the end of last year in Canada and the state. We've got it here now. All the episodes are out but this is just it has been such a runaway hit, and I feel like we've got a couple of like theories as to why that is. Because if you think about the premise of it a gay hockey love story, hockey could not care less, don't care about hockey. Never seen a game in my life, I don't know how to skate.
00:07:47
Speaker 3: And I think that put a lot of people off at first, because they've really thought the hockey was like a much bigger part of this story. It's not if you like hockey, great, if you don't, it doesn't matter.
00:07:55
Speaker 1: It's completely not part of the story in an important way. But these two are so hot and literally first episode I'm not going to spoil it, but first episode it is so steamy, probably the most steamy, saucy sex scenes I have ever seen in a production. Yeah, and it's very like Clutch My Pearls.
00:08:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think it's like one of the first adaptations of sort of a smutty romantic book that I've seen where they've actually like gone hell for leather on the sex scenes. They're also quite romantic throughout the series, Like it's not all just like also sexy. There's a lot of romance too, but they've actually really committed to bringing the page to the screen, and that doesn't always happen with romance adaptations.
00:08:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I.
00:08:38
Speaker 3: Feel like that's also a big part of why this has been so successful is it's part of that sort of new wave of romcom formula where they're doing a book that's been really big across fandoms and has an inbuilt audience, like maybe it's on book talk, maybe it's like in book clubs with mums around the country. That's where Reese Witherspoon found her niche for her adaptations. But it means you've got like an inbuilt audience. And so when this was announced, fans were like, oh my god, So I knew about this before it aired, only because I'm in those spaces where people are like, this book I love is getting adapted, So you've got that already. Then you lean into the fact that you cast these unknown actors. So the two actors had like I think Connor had like five thousand or seven thousand followers on Instagram when the show started and had been working as a model and an actor for years. I think Hudson had like also a few thousand. Also an actor. He was in a Hallmark movie like This Year where he has one line that was his other big credit of the years.
00:09:28
Speaker 2: So it's like they.
00:09:29
Speaker 3: Were not known people, and what you can do with that is really really see them as these characters. I had so many people message me and go, wait, Illi is not Russian in real life because you didn't know who they were, so you fall in love with them as these characters. And then you add on top of that, just like a banging soundtrack that lends itself really well to edits to Spotify playlist, to like singing along in the shower, and you have that sort of like perfect recipe for a viral hit.
00:09:53
Speaker 1: And it's been really interesting because people are very confused about the fact that this show is very very popular with women, very popular with women. People like what and Hudson Williams has said he did an interview and he said women, but really everyone is really tough of emotionally unavailable men. And to see people open up in that way and characters show up in that way on TV is a rarity. And I think we're ready for it, and I love that. I think that that's such a big part of it. It's not necessarily about they're a same sex couple. It's the romance, it's the openness of these characters. And something that I think is really really key here is that the power dynamic between the two is on equal footing. Think about fifty Shades of Gray for example, that power dynamic. There is such a huge disparity between the two this the two of them. While Ilia still is a little bit more powerful in terms of his forwardness in his sexuality, but as a general rule, the two of them are on equal footing. They're both successful, they're both talented, they're both hiding this part of their sexuality from the rest of their teammates, and it is so titillating.
00:11:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, it got a little bit of backlash the sort of how he said it, but I completely saw what he was going for. But the creator, Jacob Tiney sort of touched on that and said that, like, the reason that a lot of straight women might like this series is what you're saying of seeing these two people who are both in the same sort of circumstance in society, like men and women have different dynamics in straight relationships, Like it's just not vis fact of the world that we live in so women are concerned about things like danger in relationships or like being seen as less than the men that they're with. Whereas you take two men and you put them in a relationship, they face a lot of similar obstacles. Obviously, this is very different as well, because you're talking about two closeted gay players in a league that is probably not going to be okay with that.
00:11:43
Speaker 2: That's a part of their story. But it's really.
00:11:45
Speaker 3: Interesting that so many straight women have loved this series, and I do think it partly comes down to the fact that so much romance content is made for straight women, so many romance novels, so many rom coms, Like the main audience of a lot of that content is straight women because it's made for straight women. But then outside of that, Hudson Williams has also spoken, I think in the same interview as Connor, he was saying, you know, this isn't just straight who are watching it. It's also queer women, it's also trans women. A lot of women are loving this because it's also just seeing that portrayal of like a soft love, a yearning love, that sort of romance that we don't see in the real world. It's like Bridgitton where Bridgeston' is not realistic to the time period, but it's so nice to see Oh my god, that man he just loves that girl so damn much. It's nice to see someone loving someone this intensely and having this kind of romance.
00:12:31
Speaker 1: There's been this trend on TikTok about men going, oh, what is the female equivalent to Megan Fox in Transformers opening the hood of the car? Like do do you know that scene? You know what I'm talking about? So that is like that was like the pinnacle of hot for men, you know, and men are like, oh, okay, so the female equivalent must be like a really buff man, and it's like, no, no, the female equivalent the female gaze is stolen looks. It's passion. It's a little hand touch, genuine connection. It's those little looks and those like the foot the foot under the table thing in like the first episode. Yeah, oh my god, yeah so sexy.
00:13:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think again to expose myself. I'm in the TikTok forums and the Reddit forums. I'm all the way in there. But those are the things making the edits. It's like the little feet touches, the little glances of the eyes, like they've really done an amazing job of portraying that sort of yearning and also just like a different kind of gay love story, Like it's just nice to see. I guess in this current moment in Hollywood, more and more gay love stories still making their way to the screen. And at the end of the day, like while there's been a lot of discussion about like this particular show and the relationship that it's portraying, there are so many gay creatives, journalists like podcast hosts who have had the boys on, who have interviewed them, who have just been on TikTok on Instagram speaking about how much they love the show. It's just a really nice, also beautiful representation as well of a beautiful queer love story, Like it's nice. It's nice that the storyline is two people falling in love and that is the central thing holding it together.
00:14:01
Speaker 1: It's been so interesting since Barbie because I feel like it's like Hollywood is finally realizing that women will actually pay money and they will bring in dollars at the box office. Because if you think about Hollywood execs, it's going to be primarily men and straight men at the top. Of these organizations who are making these decisions. So as a result, they're kind of taking control of what we watch. Yeah, so it's like it's not for you, but realize that there is a market for that. And this is such a great example of this. Again.
00:14:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of content decisions in Hollywood are obviously made by straight men off and straight white men. And so the more that we can sort of champion these stories and build them up when they're told from other perspectives, whether that's by straight women, by gay men, by all different types of people, it gives us more variety. And also it's what we want to see. The crowds are there, The millions of people watching are there. And obviously, as I said before, like this show is airing on HBO Max kind of globally, but it wasn't made by them, And HBO exec Casey Boyce said, like, we're going to stay out of it because that's the concern that people have. This has been renewed for a second season. This show was made with like five dollars thirty six days and like a dream and a twinkle in someone's eye, like they had nothing. If you get into the show and you want to go watch behind the scenes footage, like it's a miracle this show looks as good as it does. They really did amazing work with what they had. But Casey was like, we're staying out of it. We're gonna get away from it. Love and we need that more. Like Reese Witherspoon was saying it over the summer, she was like, let us see romance on screens, Like people are yearning for it. They want to spend the money and go to the cinema, they want to get a HBO Mac subscription to watch the show.
00:15:32
Speaker 2: Just give us more. Yeah, and it's really.
00:15:34
Speaker 3: Interesting like as well with how much it's taken off, like they committed to it, the cast, the actors, everyone involved.
00:15:39
Speaker 2: I work in social media.
00:15:40
Speaker 3: Whoever was their social editor on that set was like running it like the Navy. There has been a new edit, a new photo shoot, a new something dropping every single day. They're doing interviews, that are doing podcasts. They're really pushing it out there to the point that yeah, now they both have a million followers and a global smash hit. But they really backed themselves on it too, because they know they have been in every interview saying we knew this would have an audience. We know people want this content and.
00:16:03
Speaker 1: It's so good. Yeah, it's so so if you haven't seen Heated Rivalry yet, I hope that this kind of encouraged you to. It's available on HBO Max now. All six episodes are out. They're about an hour each, so they're like nice and juicy. This is a really good one to get your teeth into.
00:16:21
Speaker 2: Yes, it's amazing. I hope you will watch it and then we can.
00:16:24
Speaker 3: Talk about it more on the Spella Nana. So something else that we have to talk about today is an essay that dropped on the cut that had almost like I guess every single person that mum and we are talking this morning. It had the group chats going. I'm sure there were many a mum group chat that were heating up over this this morning. It is the article by Ashley Tisdale about the breakup of her mum friendship group.
00:16:47
Speaker 1: This article is so piping hot. I've been down a massive rabbit hole going through all of this. So basically this article, she is comparing a mum's group that she was a part of when her first child was little, that she had back in the pandemic. She's comparing this particular mum's group to.
00:17:05
Speaker 3: High school, which is apt because famous for being in high school musical. So like, if anyone's qualified to talk about a high school experience, it's actually dissol sharp.
00:17:12
Speaker 1: Hay is back, yes, and she's got the cut. She's got it okay. So this is the one paragraph that really really struck me. Lately, I've been thinking about how being a new mum has emotional echoes of high school. It's an exciting time for discovery and growth, but it's also a time of feeling vulnerable and unsure. You're thrust into new situations with new people, wondering if they could be the friend who can walk beside you in this new time in your life, and there's no way to know for sure unless you really put yourself out there. And in both cases your hormones are all over the place. I actually think that.
00:17:44
Speaker 2: That's very apt and fair.
00:17:45
Speaker 1: That is super fair. So basically, she's talking about she was feeling excluded in this ms mum group. She was seeing that they were going and doing trips without her, she felt like they were making plans without her, And eventually she basically goes into the mums group and says, I don't feel like I like this anymore. This isn't healthy for me. I'm leaving. That is basically what the article is about. Yep, and people are so into this is because while she didn't mention any names, specifically internet sleuths and basically anybody with an Instagram account has been able to go back and see that she was a part of a celebrity mum group that also included Hillary Duff, Mandy Moore and Megan Trainer and Liam michel I.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: Think that's so juicy.
00:18:30
Speaker 3: It's like a Hollywood Who's who of a guess b list them all.
00:18:33
Speaker 1: It's so good. So we've got these photos and they're all in matching truck suits and these white matching truck suits. They're all smiling, makeup free.
00:18:41
Speaker 2: You know.
00:18:41
Speaker 1: I love these girls. These are my goals, Like I love them. Thank you so much for the support. But now none of them are following each other. So Hillary Duff doesn't follow Actually Tearsdale anymore, Many More doesn't follow her anymore, and Acshally Tisdale doesn't follow them either, so people have now deduced that there has been some sort of rift between the two of them. Between Ashley Tisdale and the rest of the group. Right, Actually Tiss is inferring in this article. That is because they were bullying her and being a mean girl.
00:19:12
Speaker 3: Yes, there's two things that are so celebrity here that like no one else is getting away with. One thing is like, regular people can unfollow people and like it's fine, But if you're a celebrity and you make the choice to unfollow someone, it's a statement. Absolutely you're putting out there about the status of your relationship because people will notice, Like people like you and me, we're gonna go look at that, and we're gonna see that they're not following each other and we're going to go that's strange. The second thing is imagine being like, you know what, I feel a little bit petty about this thing that happened to me, and I think the answer is going to the cut and writing a first person essay. A unique experience that only a handful of celebrities can do. But it's a very fun one, I guess to play with.
00:19:47
Speaker 1: It's also so funny because the Mum group drama is actually super relatable. I have been a part of Mum's groups. They can be pretty toxic and particularly mum like Facebook groups and all of that thing, because mum life can be so all consuming, and it can also be very very judgmental, like are your breastfeeding is it formula? How you are you sleep training and your baby? Like everybody has an opinion and it can become really really icky and toxic. So a lot of people have responded to this particular article being like, oh my god, I relate to this so hard. This is super relatable. I had this happen to me. So it's almost quite funny. It's like those old people magazine articles of celebs. They're just like, they're just like us.
00:20:29
Speaker 2: They also fight, they.
00:20:31
Speaker 1: Also have mum drama.
00:20:32
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:20:33
Speaker 1: But where this gets even more juicy and interesting, it's not the fact that Ashley Tisdell has been quote unquote bullied by this particular mum's group, or or in fact that this relationship of grown adult women has collapsed. Because look, female friendships sometimes can be a bit more short lived, and they can be some really challenging moments in a female friendship.
00:20:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, people can be in your life for a reason or a season.
00:20:54
Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
00:20:55
Speaker 2: Oh, I love that.
00:20:56
Speaker 1: That's so cute.
00:20:56
Speaker 2: I didn't come up with it, but I'll pretend.
00:20:58
Speaker 1: Okay, no, you should, just sure I liked it. So there's been some speculation that is potentially because of the politics of Ashley Tale. I was in a very deep rabbit hole and one reddita set I noticed a shift. Around the time of the fires in California last year. Mandy's family was affected by the fires. Her, her husband, and their children all lived with Hillary for a couple of months due to the fire damage in their home. Other members of Mandy's family completely lost their homes. I remember actually being super tone deaf around this, posting about how grateful she was that she wasn't affected by the fires, and continued talking about plans to build her vacation home. She wasn't pictured with the mum group again after this. I have a feeling that that affected her relationship within the mum group.
00:21:42
Speaker 2: Interesting.
00:21:43
Speaker 3: So in the article, she says that what started happening to her was she would find herself not invited to dinners, or she would find herself not invited to get away, and that the thing would always be from the rest of the women in this mum group, like but you're always invited or you're always welcome you can always come and that is something that a lot of people have like real world experience.
00:21:59
Speaker 1: Of Yeah, and it might be a way of just trying to like not be super confrontational, but also wanting to separate themselves from this person. So the other layer to all of this. And Laura and I had did a deep dive on this last year about the relationship between Haley and Hillary Doff, So it has sort of been documented that Hailey and Hillary Duff have had a massive falling out because of Hailey's politics potentially. Now what's interesting, Ashley Tisdale still follows Hailey Duff and Hailey follows Ashley, so people are kind of making it could be tenuous but a connection between those two and suggesting that perhaps her more conservative politics are part of the reason that this friendship breakdown has been happening.
00:22:46
Speaker 3: That's really interesting that they're still following each other, and I think there's a lot of comments coming up on this article now suggesting that it could be because of her conservative beliefs, So it would check out. Likewise, if Hailey's also in maybe potentially a similar situation of not being on speaking terms with Hillary, that that would also affect Ashley if they were also aligned politically.
00:23:05
Speaker 1: It's just it's so juicye. I think the reason people are finding it so interesting as well is because it's this peak behind celebrity life that isn't so glossy. It is like her, Yeah, it's something that everybody experiences, whether it's in a work relationship, whether it's in your own mum group, whether it's with your family. It feels so titillating.
00:23:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, And at the moment, this is all a bit of like he said, she said, she said, she said, because it's just sort of fans pulling strings together. But I would never discount fans doing that because more often than not, like they kind of uncover a little something that snowballs in the news cycle. But what is really interesting here is like, you didn't have to do this, You didn't have to write an essay about the breakdown of your friendship group and sort of bring this all up. But it has already quite predictably started to cycle back around people going well, what did you do, Ashley Tisdale. So it's like it's started as going, oh, juice drama. Everyone's interested, what's going on? What did those mean women do to her? And it's already circled back to did you do something to cause this problem? And people are digging up little receipts and things like that. So it's very interesting and it will be very interesting to see should anyone comment on this. Do they all just like ignore it? What's going to happen next? It's very interesting, is like the first life cycles of like a new drama.
00:24:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so funny because when I first read it, I really related to a lot of the things that she said in the article. I really did, because I do think a lot of that is very, very relatable for a new mother, because it is a very difficult time of your life where you are so all consumed with this child, with this baby and keeping this thing alive, and you're awake at all hours of the night, and it is such an isolating experience. But the great thing about a mum's group is that at three am, when you're breastfeeding, you can almost guarantee that somebody in that group is awake. And there were so many times during the newborn phase with my children where I was texting with this group at two o'clock in the morning and there was someone there to listen to you. Yeah, and it kind of does help a lot make that sort of new motherhood experience less isolating. However, there is also a topicity to it sometimes because of these differing views, and it can become very mean girl, it can become very high school.
00:25:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean, look, I have zero experience or understanding of what any of that is like, but I do imagine that that would be one of the most intense kinds of friendships to have.
00:25:22
Speaker 2: Whether it's the supportive kind or the toxic kind.
00:25:24
Speaker 3: Like if you're all in this together in one of what is from the outside looking in, got to be one of the hardest times of any woman's life who's just had a child. Being in a mum's group would theoretically be very supportive. But if those women were not supportive of you, or if there was tension, I could imagine that that is a toxic environment to be in at times. And that seems to be what has resonated here from this article for people.
00:25:44
Speaker 1: From my experience, the issues often occur with differences in parenting styles.
00:25:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:25:50
Speaker 1: Interesting, when people have an opinion about their parenting, they are one hundred percent right. It is got you you you know you can't do that. Are your sleep training? That's so cruel? You can't do that? Yeah, oh, formula, don't you know that breast is best? You shouldn't use that because it's toxic. Are you still using a dummy? Oh my god? Screen time is so bad and it descends into chaos.
00:26:13
Speaker 3: And look, allegedly you add into that mix potentially different political views, which can also lead into how people choose to parent. That could be a toxic environment and maybe they just didn't want to at the Groove vacation anymore.
00:26:25
Speaker 1: Look, we can continue to speculate, and I'm gonna keep going down a rabbit hole. So if we find anything else on it, we might have to also ask Laura more about the Hailey Hillary stuff because she's so up to date on that law.
00:26:36
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:26:37
Speaker 3: Look, if you guys want to have a listen, go back and check it out, because you guys dove deep into the like you guys spoke about the original creator who sort of did all the pointing out and like crazy mind mapping to figure all of this out. Yeah, there's a lot of juicy drama there between them. Thanks so much for listening to Spill today.
00:26:51
Speaker 1: Guys. Make sure you're following this spill on TikTok and Instagram. We always post some wonderful stuff up on there. We'll be back here in your feed tomorrow morning with Morning Tea, hosted by the wonderful Ash London. This bill is produced by Minisia It's Warren with sound production by Scott Stronach. But bye Bye, Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land. We have recorded this podcast on the Gadigol people of the Oronation. We pay our respects to their elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
