Ashley Tisdale Created A New Village For Herself

Our kids might know her from as a voice from Phineas & Ferb, but us millennials probably know her as Sharpay Evans from High School Musical. These days, Ashley Tisdale is a mom of two and the founder of Being Frenshe, a wellness brand that’s centered around scent.

Of course, Tisdale, who has been working since she was three, is no stranger to online discourse about mental health and, lately, motherhood. (You had to be living under a rock not to read and discuss her viral essay in The Cut back in January.) When we sit down to chat recently, she won’t talk about it — not shockingly — but she will discuss motherhood more abstractly, her kids, her mental health struggles, and how she’s most like Sharpay Evans as a mom.

Scary Mommy: What's been the wildest part of being a mom?

Ashley Tisdale: Every day is a different journey. Every day is wild. People always ask me, "Are you going to put them in the business?" I'm like, "No." I grew up in the business and have been working since I was three, so I just don't want that for my kids.

But it's so interesting to see my five-year-old... She loves to perform; she's definitely meant to do something on the performance level at some point… She watches Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen videos that stuff that I grew up on and she loves it. She's like, "I want to do things like that." And I'm like, "I know, but no." There's so many things that I'm so grateful and lucky to have not fallen into that I think a lot of other people have and I think I'm a very rare case; I just want her to be a kid.

SM: What made you want to be so open about your mental health and postpartum struggles?

AT: It was maybe seven years ago, when I was very open about what I struggled with. The reason for that was because I felt like, in society, everybody was comfortable talking about anxiety, but they weren't talking about depression. I know how anxiety and depression work. If you struggle with one, you struggle with the other. So I just was like, why is there so much of a stigma around depression? I felt a need for me to make people feel okay that we struggle with that and that you aren't alone in it. I lost somebody to depression, and then at the time too, there were a lot of people in the world that we were losing too.

So I think it's time we talk about these things. At the time, I was doing an album called Symptoms and I just felt like if I could make people feel less alone and talk about these things, maybe they won't feel so bad about struggling with it. I was nervous, obviously; I didn't know how people would react to it. I was just like, "I hope I'm not letting people down because they know me as a certain character, but this is something that I have struggled with.” And talking about it and doing the album was such an amazing, beautiful reaction, and I felt like people were more open with me about what they struggled with.

In creating Frenshe, I just kept going on that journey and being very open and vocal. When I dealt with postpartum depression, I was going to talk about that too because it’s very interesting. How I thought about it or knew about it was that it was like a level of depression that you're in bed nonstop, but that's not me. I've never been someone who's been on medication; I have had panic attacks and stuff, but I very much have learned and done therapy and have these tools that help me in those moments.

So for me, depression comes in just having these low moments. I'm very active and I didn't know what I was struggling with because it was almost like an intense anxiety that none of my tools were working and it was to the point where I was not even diagnosed with postpartum depression until two years [later].

KA: You felt different than the regular anxiety you had before.

AT: Oh my god, so much. It was just like I would be in the car on the freeway and start having a panic attack for no reason. I was like, "What is going on with me?" I felt a need to talk about it because it also made me scared to have another baby. And I have to say I had a completely different experience.

When I had Emerson it was like I was on another level of happiness. It was such a different experience, even down to breastfeeding. I’m so glad I had another baby to experience that because I felt like the first one really robbed me of it. And I felt I needed to tell people like, "Just so you know, don't be scared to have another kid because it could be completely opposite." It was almost like the second one leveled out my hormones in a weird way.

SM: Was there anything about becoming a mom that felt lonelier than you expected?

AT: Yeah. I think that you feel like no one can understand what you're going through. Even my husband, [who] is so amazing and he's such a great dad. But I was going through such a postpartum experience, and didn’t know what my body was anymore and who I was. I've always really known who I am and what I wanted to do my whole life.

And then having my first baby, I was just like, who am I? And we were in COVID, you're home and you're like, what am I doing? I'm not really acting anymore. I'm developing this line. I've never done this before. Everything was so new for me that I just didn't know who I was. So my therapist was like, "It's like you're in a maze and you have to find your way out because you can never go back to that person that you once were." No one ever talks about these things. My sister has a kid and my friends have kids and they never mentioned, "Just so you know, you might go through this thing."

People don’t really talk about it maybe because they don't remember it or they don't want to remember it, but it's a very lonely time after, where you're trying to find yourself and who you are and who's this body and getting comfortable with that. And so the loneliest part was really just trying to go through those feelings all alone. Of course I'm like, "I don't feel great and I don't look great." And my husband's like, "I think you look amazing." That is not how you feel. It's like, thanks, but I don't really believe you. And it just takes time. You do eventually get there and I think that's probably why I had a better experience with the second baby, because I accepted all of those things that I was about to go through because I'd already been through it.

SM: You've been online long enough to experience multiple eras of the internet. What do you hope is different for your daughters?

AT: I hope they never go on the internet, but that's probably not going to happen. I've seen all the different eras and I think that right now, social media is pretty dark, to be honest. There's amazing parts about it, which is connecting, which is what I use it for. I've always felt like I do comedy to make people laugh. I try to bring people out of their life to have a better experience. I remember when we were on Disney, we would visit children's hospitals. And I still go; I love to visit the kids and to make a family or that kid take a step out and just be able to enjoy themselves or forget what they're going through.

I decided a couple of years ago on social media that it would be a platform for me to make people feel good. I don't share all my things on social media anymore. I have not for a while. There's so much out there and it's very loud; I just want to be someone's safe space. And that's what I share at this point. It's interesting because actually this is a perfect example, but there was a time where I saw someone talk about me who worked at a hair salon and not in a positive way, but I'll see him in the hair salon, he won't say that to my face.

And I think that's what people do on social media too much and I think that you would not normally say those things to somebody. Why is that person commenting like that? And so for me, I have a healthy relationship with social media because I grew up without it. I look at it as a job and it's a part of me, but it's not all of me. I think people being raised in it or the younger generation, that's all they've had. That's what they think is the biggest thing and so it's really sad because they struggle with it and they take things personally and it's just not healthy for kids. It’s just not a healthy environment because there's a lot of shit in the world, to be honest.

I don't know what the internet's going to look like for my kids, but hopefully it's better. I can only hope that it gets worse before it gets better. But now even for me, I just put out content that is, it's not real. I don't put out my life anymore. So it is a version of my life.

SM: You had a baby in COVID, so how did you make friends?

AT: Well, you rely on a lot of people that are in your life that obviously are having kids at the same time. And then thankfully, obviously they go to preschool one day. I have a lot of different mom friends. I have moms in Malibu, I have moms at the school, I have a lot of different people. You create that village that you can rely on. The people around you are important, especially for those early stages.

SM: What's the most Sharpay Evans thing about you as a mom?

AT: Oh, interesting. I feel multi-talented. I want it all. I think you can have it all. I think what I've done with the company and where we are and the success that we've had, I think it just shows that you can do it all. When I was becoming a mom, because we were in the middle of COVID we couldn't do classes, but I had a doula who did online little group things weekly. So every week, she would introduce us to a new expert. So you felt like you had this group of women that you're going through this with and everybody was cheering on everyone. They were like, "Oh my God, it's my time to go have the baby." And it was really cute. I remember a lot of the moms were scared about how their work relationship would change with having a kid. And I was like, oh my gosh, what if it changes for me too? And it does change to a certain aspect.

For me, I just want to be with my kids. Thankfully I found something to do that I'm able to do with my kids. But it also doesn't mean that you can't do something and be successful in whatever you want to do. You literally can do it all: You can be a mom, you can be present with your children and you can also be successful in whatever you're putting your mind to. So I feel like that, to me, is a Sharpay Evans thing because she would be the type of person that would do it all. I mean, obviously her song, “I Want It All”, is about that too.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.