Mama mia! Tori Spelling appeared on Access Hollywood Live on Tuesday, Dec. 2, and opened up about her current relationship — or lack thereof — with mom Candy Spelling. The two have been through a lot of highs and lows in the last two decades, and right now, it seems, they're at a pretty steady low.
"There's not currently much of a relationship," the True Tori star, 41, admitted to hosts Billy Bush and Kit Hoover. Asked about a report that she limits contact with her mom, 69, to text messaging, she said, "Yeah, there's not much communication either way…She hasn't called me, either."
Which is not to say there's no hope for them. "You always want that relationship, and you keep wanting to attain it, even if it's something you can't ever get…And it's hard," the Beverly Hills, 90210 alum shared.
"I think the biggest thing in a mother-daughter relationship is accepting the relationship for what it is, not what you want it to be. And I haven't gotten there yet," she continued. "I still want that mother-daughter relationship that I hope it can be."
Their problems, the reality star elaborated, go back a long time and stem, in part, from their mutual affection for Tori's father, the late TV legend Aaron Spelling, who died in 2006.
"Obviously I'll never know what really went on, but growing up, I definitely was closer with my dad. I was very much a daddy's girl," Tori — who has four kids of her own with Dean McDermott — explained. "And as an adult, I can go back and look at the relationship and see that he kind of always positioned her as, like, he was good cop, she was bad cop. And he kind of created a little bit of that dynamic. It wasn't just all her."
Tori's relationship with Aaron didn't just change her relationship with Candy, though — it also changed Candy's relationship with Aaron. "I think he created a lot of the competition between us," Tori admitted to Access Hollywood. "He was the good guy, so everyone vied for his attention, and a lot of that attention went from her to all me."
Candy, for her part, previously claimed to Access Hollywood that she has offered both financial and emotional support to Tori and Dean during their tumultuous past several years. "Candy has provided financial help in the past and has offered repeatedly to pay for the children's private schooling and Tori has never told her where to send the money," her rep said in a statement in November. "Candy reaches out often to see them and unfortunately Tori and Dean are not responsive."
