Hilary Duff Opens Up About Fractured Relationship With Haylie Duff
Hilary Duff says she is coming clean about a long-running rift with haylie duff, a split that has kept the sisters out of public photographs for six-plus years and surfaces in raw lyrics on her new album, released Feb. 20.
Haylie Duff hasn’t been photographed publicly with Hilary in years
The estrangement is threaded through several songs on the 38-year-old’s new record, most explicitly on a track titled "We Don't Talk, " which Hilary appears to use to address a long-rumored falling out with her older sister. The two once shared public moments — Haylie welcomed her oldest daughter, Ryan, in May 2015, and Hilary recalled moments from that visit, including her then-3-year-old son Luca offering a lovey to soothe the baby.
Family wounds and a decade of material for a new album
Hilary framed the record as personal excavation: she told Glamour that she penned much of the album alongside her songwriter husband, Matthew Koma, and that the music mines family drama stretching back years. One song, "The Optimist, " touches on fallout from their parents Bob Duff and Susan Duff's messy 2008 divorce; Hilary sings lines like "I wish I could sleep on planes, and that my father would really love me, " and said she felt ready to share those experiences now.
From early motherhood to a public silence
Once close when their families overlapped — Haylie is two years older and had children Ryan and Lulu, who are mentioned in Hilary’s public recollections — the sisters’ distance is stark in the record. Hilary recounted how Haylie had Ryan on a schedule shortly after the May 2015 birth and highlighted small parenting scenes, such as Luca calming the newborn with his lovey. Those domestic details sit alongside broader lines about family fracture and emotional eviction.
Hilary stopped short of spelling out the cause of the estrangement. "That's my family, " she said, noting that family members "take up the most space naturally as a human who's born into something, " and adding that "you can only control your side and your street. " The album gives listeners a direct window into that position without offering a public explanation for the split.
On the record, the 38-year-old also referenced her life in the present: she wrote with Matthew Koma, who is the dad to her daughters Banks, 7, and Mae, 4, and their younger child, Townes, 21 months. The album’s personal material — and its explicit mentions of familial distance — marks a moment of public reckoning for a performer who had previously shared lighter parenting anecdotes about Haylie and her children.
Hilary has said she felt ready to be honest on the new record and has been promoting the album since its Feb. 20 release.
