An Exclusive Interview with Ashley Tisdale: August 2023

Ashley Tisdale is VERY busy. Her line of mood-boosting scented beauty and wellness products, Being Frenshe, launched at Target in 2022, as the natural progression to her wellness platform Frenshe (a play on her husband Christopher French’s last name and the word “she”).

Now, Being Frenshe is partnering with supplement brand Natrol to help people get their sleep back on track, so they can navigate the transition from summer to fall with ease — something that is especially important for Tisdale as her daughter Jupiter Iris French, 2, prepares to start school this fall. And if all of that wasn’t enough, “I'm also interior designing two homes right now, just on the side, just for fun,” the entrepreneur and actress tells Shape. “So I'm constantly busy and if I don't get good sleep, it's just not a good day.”

For the star, the foundations for a good night’s sleep are created throughout the day. “I am someone who loves to work a lot, and I tend to kind of just binge work in some ways, so there are small things that you can do,” she explains. “It's important to step away from your computer and just go outside and sit there for a couple of minutes, like, off your phone, just in nature, and those little sips of sitting there and letting your nervous system come down really also help just kind of prepare you to have great sleep as well.” Tisdale has been open about dealing with anxiety over the years, and she has realized how far working to soothe her anxiety throughout the day goes towards helping her sleep more soundly at night.

Of course, that’s not to say she doesn’t also have a toolkit of pre-bedtime rituals to ensure she wakes up feeling rested the next day, including tapping into the Being Frenshe Lavender Cloud range, which blends lavender, sage, coconut milk and purple iris, and is specifically designed to help you unwind via the likes of scented bath bombs and essential oil-infused candles. She’s also a big fan of Natrol’s melatonin gummies, which she finds are “so good at helping you get to sleep but also stay asleep.”

As is the case for all parents of young children, the summer can be a pretty disruptive time for Tisdale’s routine, but she’s been having a lovely time with her family over the past few weeks. “In the summertime we just love to go to the beach and do really fun activities with [Jupiter],” she says. “Sometimes, you know, I tend to get so busy that I neglect my rituals in some ways, so it's important to get back on track, and especially with our sleep. I know that in summer that's a big thing for everybody, that we're just so busy with friends and doing things that we tend to kind of go off track a little bit.”

Still, Tisdale knows that going off track is completely natural, and she’s not one to beat herself up about it. “I know when I've been off of my routine, because my anxiety will basically spike a little bit more, and then my sleep gets bad, so it really is kind of just like a spiral effect if I haven't been on top of my stuff,” she says. “Instead of just being hard on myself, and saying like, ‘oh my God, it's because you didn't do this,’ it's just like, OK, then you just implement the stuff that works for you and kind of go back to really taking care of yourself.”

Spending quality time with her family is a top priority for Tisdale, but she also knows that she can’t be fully present for her husband and daughter if she’s not taking good care of herself first. “The me time is so important, like after Jupiter goes down, I sometimes go take a bath and just be able to kind of go back [to self-care],” she says. “It's so easy to kind of neglect that stuff, to be like, ‘oh, I want to watch my favorite show with my husband, I want to do this,’ and it's like, no, those things are … just super important to feel present the next day.”

For Tisdale, getting restorative sleep directly affects how much energy she has to make the most of her time with Jupiter — especially since she’ll be seeing less of the little girl once she starts school. If she doesn’t sleep well, she explains, she’s more likely to get her husband to be up with their daughter when she wakes up. “I'm like, ‘oh my God, take this morning, like, I didn't get good sleep,’” she says. “You know, I've had insomnia in the past, so I'm prone to having those sleepless nights. So now it's just so important for me to get really good restful sleep, so I can be there in the [morning] to get her ready for school.”

We all know that sleep, nutrition, exercise, and not overworking ourselves are absolutely crucial building blocks for us to feel well overall, but there’s another piece to the well-being puzzle: cultivating joy, fun, and creativity, a skill that Tisdale has down to a T. “The stuff that just lights me up is obviously spending time with my family and with my daughter, so on the weekends, I obviously don't work at all, and I just spend time with her and my family, and we love to go to the beach and … I love to hike,” she says. “Hiking is something that’s really just good for me, that I try to get in in the mornings during the week, but I really just try to do at least something that I know fills me up every day.”