Ashley Judd has opened up about the religious and political tensions that divided her from late mother Naomi Judd.
The actress, 58, made the revelations on the premiere episode of “A Table Prepared,” a new podcast she co-hosts with former Christ Church Nashville Pastor Dan Scott, which dropped Friday.
Ashley claimed Naomi once “threatened to stop paying” her college tuition because of a professor’s identity and curriculum. “She didn’t like what I was learning,” Ashley explained to Scott on the episode. “She didn’t like [that] I had a lesbian theologian professor that was taking me through Hebrew scripture and looking at the women listed as property after the donkeys.”
The “High Crimes” star went further, alleging that Naomi — who died by suicide in April 2022 at age 76 — felt constrained by the country music industry’s expectations. Ashley said her mother feared “disapproval and retaliation” if she publicly deviated from politically conservative positions associated with the genre.
Yet Ashley painted a more nuanced portrait of Naomi’s private politics. “She could share all kinds of political and social views that would surprise people if they thought Naomi Judd thought, felt, said that,” she recalled. Ashley specified that Naomi was “especially” open with her about such matters “in the home.”
The actress also disclosed one of her mother’s more unexpected sympathies. Naomi had “a lot of compassion” for women in headlines for harming their children, Ashley shared. “She would say they need help, not punishment,” she continued, though she admitted uncertainty about whether Naomi “would have been comfortable in her lifetime saying that.”
This tension between public and private selves weighed on Ashley as she decided how much to reveal posthumously. “I’ve debated with myself, is it okay for me to say that posthumously and attribute it to her?” she confessed. She described an internal dialogue that helped resolve her hesitation: “I was up the other morning … and the part of my mother that lives in me said, ‘Honey, I told stories. You tell the truth.'”
Ashley interpreted that moment as a transfer of responsibility. She felt her mom had “passed [the] baton.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Ashley thanked Scott for his presence during Naomi’s final months. “A couple of times, close to the end of her life, when she was in and out of the hospital for various reasons, you would be one of the people I would call, and you always faithfully showed up,” she said. “She would be so delighted to see you.”
Ashley was the person who discovered Naomi after she fatally shot herself in her Tennessee home. In the 2024 docuseries “Judd Family: Truth Be Told,” she described holding her mother and speaking to her in those final moments. “It’s OK, it’s OK. I’ve seen how much you’ve been suffering,” she recounted saying.
Naomi’s death came after years of documented mental health struggles that she had spoken about publicly, including severe depression and anxiety.
The podcast premiere marks Ashley’s latest effort to process her grief publicly while reshaping the narrative around her famous family. The mother-daughter relationship had long been complicated by both women’s candor about their difficulties — Naomi wrote about their conflicts in her 2016 memoir, and Ashley has previously discussed estrangement periods.
The “A Table Prepared” podcast appears to blend spiritual conversation with personal revelation, fitting Ashley’s pattern of using faith frameworks to examine painful subjects. Scott’s role as her co-host — and his prior connection to Naomi — provides a bridge between the family’s past and Ashley’s present reckoning.
Ashley and Scott’s “A Table Prepared” podcast releases new episodes weekly.