The unfolding drama surrounding Ashley Tisdale’s former mum group has shone a spotlight on the inner workings and splashy feuds of Hollywood’s most famous celebrity cliques.
When Tisdale penned a scathing essay about the “toxic” group — which may or *may not* include Mandy Moore, Hilary Duff, and Meghan Trainor — she did more than just offer a peek behind the paparazzi cameras. She reminded us of all the famous friendship circles that came before, and the infamous disputes that threatened to undo them.
Inspired by the celebrity-filled group, here’s a rundown of all the celebrity cliques that run Hollywood, how they intersect, and whether or not they’ve been rocked by Tisdale-like revelations. They say Hollywood is a small town, so here’s the local’s guide.
Taylor Swift’s girl squad
Where else would we start? Taylor Swift’s so-called girl squad dominated her 1989 era, counting Selena Gomez, Gigi Hadid, Blake Lively, Karlie Kloss, Lena Dunham, Cara Delevingne and Hailee Steinfeld among its ranks.
Many appeared in the music video for Swift’s Bad Blood, which cemented the group’s reign and was, funnily enough, targeted towards Swift’s former gal pal Katy Perry.
Feuds: The squad’s current status is murky. Some members, like Swift and Gomez, still remain in contact while others have seemingly peeled away over the years.
Reports claimed Swift grew distant from Kloss, while her friendship with Lively amid her legal woes was the stuff of pure tabloid fodder last year.
Swift has assembled a new group of friends in recent years, but the OG crew was, as the hashtag foretold, #squadgoals.
Peripheral members: The HAIM sisters, Zoë Kravitz, Lily Aldridge and Lorde, who likened the squad to a “cult” before clarifying she’s still friendly with Swift.
LA girls
Hadid and Delevingne connect us to another group whose friendship was forged the runway. This impossibly attractive circle — self-described as the ‘Super Natural Friend Group’ — includes supermodel Bella Hadid, fellow sister duo Kendall and Kylie Jenner, and Hailey Bieber.
This group has shared their BFF status for years on social media, which is the main source of their fame. You know, besides Victoria’s Secret shows, reality TV empires and being married to Justin Bieber.
Feuds: There were rumblings of strife between Kendall and the Hailey when they vacationed separately in 2023. The pair quickly shot down the rumours by sharing an Instagram post of themselves with the sarcastic caption, “feuding”.
Peripheral members: Sofia Richie, who dated Scott Disick. Keep an eye out for the surname Richie…
2020s It-girls
Am I messy for putting Charli xcx’s crew so soon after Swift’s? Sure. But the pop star’s gaggle of It-girls is too starry to go unmentioned.
Like Swift, Charli tapped many of her pals — like Julia Fox, Rachel Sennott, Emma Chamberlain, Gabbriette and Alex Consani — for the music video for her 2024 track, “360”.
Plenty of those names were also at Charli’s star-studded wedding to George Daniels.
Troye Sivan, Caroline Polachek, Benito Skinner, Matty Healy and Chicken Shop Date’s Amelia Dimoldenberg were all spotted at the Italian nuptials. For those counting, that’s enough stars to warrant its own constellation.
Feuds: Charli and Taylor’s rumoured feud spawned proxy wars. Gabbriette reportedly threw a social media grenade at Swift in 2025, with the equivalent of a nuke arriving last year with “Actually Romantic”. The rest is herstory, but I’m calling for a truce, stat.
Peripheral members: Addison Rae, Amelia Gray, and Lorde, with whom Charli famously worked it out on the remix.
2000s It-girls
Since we’re chatting It-girls, I present to you the era-defining clique known in their heyday as the Holy Trinity; Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears. This trio single-handedly sustained both the paparazzi and nightlife industry in the early-aughts, with the (terribly aged) “Bimbo Summit” still a reference on my annual moodboards to this day.
Feuds: Plenty. The core feud was between Lohan and Hilton, reportedly over the former’s romantic links to Hilton’s ex. The pair soon traded barbs in the press. Lohan called Hilton a “cunt” (before that was complimentary), and Hilton called her “lame”.
These days, the trio are cordial. Spears sang Hilton’s praises in her memoir, and Hilton said she and Lohan were “all good” after reconnecting at the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscars Party. It’s far from its diamanté-encrusted peak, but the Holy Trinity has healed.
Peripheral members: Mischa Barton, Heidi Montag and Nicole Richie, who starred opposite Hilton in The Simple Life. Nicole is also the half-sister of Sofia.
Duff, a fellow teen star, also orbited this crew before her infamous feud with Lohan over a love triangle involving Aaron Carter. Yep, those were the golden years.
The OG Brats
Long before Charli and Paris, a different kind of brat roamed LA’s streets.
The so-called Brat Pack was home to the biggest movie stars of the 80s, and it’s the blueprint that for all the cliques that followed.
Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, and Molly Ringwald were among the pack’s core members, having starred in iconic coming-of-age movies like The Breakfast Club, The Outsiders and Pretty In Pink.
Feuds: Kind of. Several members bristled against the press for coining the term Brat Pack, saying it trivialised their acting skills. “It felt like it diminished us, or that we were less serious,” Moore said.
The clique reportedly splintered to distance themselves from the moniker, but they reconnected for the 2024 documentary, Brats.
Peripheral members: Charlie Sheen, Kevin Bacon, and Jennifer Aniston, who Moore met through philanthropy.
Jennifer Aniston and… everyone in Hollywood
All roads in Hollywood lead back to Jennifer Aniston. Our investigation for this piece found the star to be the crux of various intersecting cliques in LA, to the point where she’s built a reputation for her weekly dinner parties and starry but intimate events.
Naturally, the Aniston Axis is spearheaded by her circle of, well, Friends.
She’s still close with Lisa Kudrow and Courteney Cox, and that trio is also friendly with a broader group that includes Reese Witherspoon, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Kristen Bell, Dax Shepard, Olivia Munn and John Mulaney.
In 2023, all of those stars were pictured enjoying a dinner celebrating Kimmel’s birthday, and some of them were seen in Friendsgiving Polaroids shared by Aniston the following year.
Feuds: Chelsea Handler frequented Aniston’s circles, but reports claimed last year the pair fell out over Handler’s repeated mentions of Angelina Jolie in the press.
We’d need a whole other deep dive to recount that saga, but Aniston was apparently not a fan of Handler labelling Jolie — Brad Pitt’s mistress — a “homewrecker”, and cut ties with the comedian sometime last year.
Peripheral members: Paul Rudd and Jason Bateman. That pair also attended Kimmell’s birthday dinner and are frequent Aniston collaborators.
The Apatow Extended Universe
Aniston and Bateman are longtime pals and sit within what we’ll call the Apatow Extended Universe, another Hollywood circle tethered to Judd Apatow’s movies. Alongside Aniston, Rudd and Bateman — who all appeared in Wanderlust — the group includes Superbad’s Seth Rogen and Step Brothers’ Adam Scott.
Feuds: The Mulaney faction of this broader circle has suffered some strife. Nick Kroll, a longtime friend of Mulaney’s, said last year that he was unimpressed when Mulaney made jokes about the intervention Kroll staged for him in 2020.
According to reports, Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen and Bill Hader (more on that crowd later) were involved in Mulaney’s intervention. While Kroll said joking about the incident was “awkward”, he and Mulaney remain friends.
Peripheral members: Apatow’s crew naturally includes his wife and actress, Leslie Mann, which brings us to another A-list clique.
Charlie’s Angels
Mann starred in the 2014 (underrated) gem The Other Woman with Cameron Diaz, who heads another clique with overlapping connections to Aniston.
Alongside Charlie’s Angels castmates Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore, Diaz maintains a broad celeb circle that includes Christina Applegate, Gwyneth Paltrow, Witherspoon and Aniston (I told you, she’s everywhere).
All of those names were on the guest list of Diaz’s 2015 wedding to Benji Madden. For those keeping track, that makes Diaz the sister-in-law of Richie, who is married to Benji’s brother, Joel. Apatow and Mann were also at the nuptials.
Feuds: Reports of a feud in this circle are scant and unsubstantiated. Rumours circulated last year that Diaz and Aniston were rivals for certain roles after the former’s return to acting, but this came only from anonymous sources. Seems the angels haven’t fallen just yet.
Peripheral members: Selma Blair and Moore, who starred opposite Diaz in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.
SNL classmates
That Apatow crew rubs shoulders with another starry comedy troupe led by Saturday Night Live icons Amy Poehler and Tina Fey.
The pair are already known as an iconic duo, but their crew is dotted by some other SNL castmates and writers like Rachel Dratch, Paula Pell and Emily Spivey.
Spivey wrote, and Poehler directed, the 2019 movie Wine Country, which also starred Dratch, Fey and Maya Rudolph — another famous member of the clique.
The group’s SNL days connect them to Meyers, Hader and Armisen, and that trio is close with Mulaney and Kroll. One can imagine how hilarious these dinner parties would be.
Feuds: Poehler and Fey’s clique appears to be drama-free, but tensions once brewed between them and the final group that brings this incestuous celebrity mess to its full circle moment: the Swift squad.
Poehler and Fey made a joke about Swift’s dating life while hosting the 2013 Golden Globes, prompting the pop star to reference a Madeleine Albright quote about the “special place in hell for women who don’t support other women”.
Poehler said she “felt bad” she offended Swift while Fey reiterated it was a “lighthearted joke”, but the status of their friendship today is unknown.
Peripheral members: Overlapping SNL stars like Jason Sudeikis, Will Forte and Kristen Wiig, who co-starred in Bridesmaids with Rudolph. Poehler’s ex-husband Will Arnett is also close with his SmartLess podcast co-host Bateman.
Aussies represent
This might be a loose connection, but we simply had to include the Aussies doing us proud overseas. Margot Robbie hosted SNL — a rotating door of the who’s who of Hollywood — back in 2016, and she also heads up a clique whose roots were grown on home soil. That includes fellow Aussies Samara Weaving and Phoebe Tonkin, who starred opposite Robbie in Babylon.
As the founder of production company LuckyChap Entertainment — behind movies like Barbie, Saltburn and the upcoming Wuthering Heights — Robbie’s fingerprints are all over this map, but her rumoured feuds also connect her elsewhere.
Feuds: While it has the stench of pure tabloid gossip, Robbie was rumoured to have beef with both Witherspoon and Lively in 2024.
Sources claimed the mammoth success of Barbie led to industry tensions as Witherspoon was forced to rethink her approach to Legally Blonde 3, which she is producing via her own company Hello Sunshine.
Meanwhile, Lively was rumoured to be taking on the role of Barbie before sources claimed she clashed with Robbie over the direction of the character. Neither of those feuds have been confirmed.
Peripheral members: Delevingne, who starred in Suicide Squad alongside Robbie. The pair were frequently snapped wearing matching ‘Skwad’ tracksuits.
So there you have it: a non-exhaustive guide to Hollywood’s overlapping and oft-feuding cliques that has me pining for a dinner party invite.
A local would tell me to enjoy a night on the Savvy Bs with Poehler and the gang before pres with Paris at Hilton Hotel and a night on the town with the Angels.
They’d also tell me to avoid Tisdale’s mum group altogether, because my skin just isn’t thick enough for a tell-all essay about my drunkenness a few months from now.
Lead images: Getty Images
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