Netflix Developing 'Toxic Moms' With Tisdale, Wong
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- Netflix landed 'Toxic Moms' for development in a competitive situation, positioning the dark half-hour comedy alongside its slate of female-led series including Running Point, Nobody Wants This, The Survival of the Thickest, and North of North.
- Ashley Tisdale is expected to star and developed the original concept, informed by her experience as a mother of two young children, after her January essay 'Breaking Up with My Toxic Mom Group' in The Cut went viral and sparked a frenzied internet sleuth campaign to identify celebrities in her former mom group.
- Sabrina Jalees is writing the series, which follows a sleep-deprived new mom drawn into a clique of wealthy mothers that reveals a darker side, and asks how far one would go for community in the isolation of motherhood.
- Ali Wong executive produces alongside Tisdale and Jalees and may direct if the project goes to series; Jalees is repped by WME and OPE Partners, Wong by UTA and Hansen Jacobson Teller.
- Tisdale broke out on Disney Channel's The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and the High School Musical franchise, previously starred in Netflix's Merry Happy Whatever, and has multi-camera comedy You're Only Young Twice in development at CBS.
Why it matters: The project carries a built-in promotional hook: typing 'toxic moms' into Google surfaces 'toxic moms Ashley Tisdale' as the top autosuggest, giving Netflix pre-existing search traffic and social-media momentum tied directly to Tisdale's viral Cut essay. Attaching Wong as a potential director and Jalees as writer converts a personal essay into a prestige-comedy package aimed at Netflix's growing female-lead slate.
