Ashley Judd Recalls Final Moments With Mom Naomi: Biggest Revelations From Lifetime’s Judds Series

Lifetime’s two-night docuseries The Judd Family: Truth Be Told concluded by chronicling Naomi Judd and Wynonna Judd’s meteoric rise to fame as the pioneering mother-daughter country music duo The Judds — as well as their roller-coaster relationship with each other.

Episodes 3 and 4 also detailed their devastating family history of sexual abuse (including Naomi’s actress daughter Ashley Judd being raped at age 14) and the tragic depression that led to Naomi’s suicide in April 2022.

The final two installments of the four-part docuseries, which premiered Sunday, May 11, on Lifetime, used interviews with Wynonna, Ashley and Naomi’s widowed husband, Larry Strickland, as well as excerpts from Naomi’s memoirs to delve into the Judd family’s loving but dysfunctional dynamic, generational trauma and unmistakable impact on the music industry.

Keep scrolling for a breakdown of revelations from parts 3 and 4 of The Judd Family: Truth Be Told:

Harmony Onstage, Acrimony Off

Episode 3, titled “Love Can Build a Bridge,” begins with family friend and country music legend Reba McEntire rhapsodizing about her introduction to The Judds — and their talent. “When I met the Judds, they were the opening act for Conway Twitty. And I thought, ‘My gosh! How’d they get this gig?’” she remembered. “After I heard them, I thought, ‘Wow, they’re going to be huge.’”

But Naomi and Wynonna weren’t always in harmony. “You put two of us together, and it was magical onstage,” shared Wynonna. “But offstage, it was lots of layers.”

While Naomi and Wynonna’s bickering made for adorable banter during talk show appearances, things could get nasty off air, and sharing a tour bus didn’t help. “The fighting got worse, so our staff, the band, everybody … we kept this covered up,” recalled Woody Bowles, a manager who handled PR for the band.

Meanwhile, The Judds’ career was thriving. Their first performance, at an event in Nebraska with an audience of 10,000, showcased the duo’s complex dynamic. “I’m standing there, looking at Mom, and the first thing I said was, ‘I want to go home,’” Wynonna recalled of her stage fright. “[Naomi] said, ‘Shut up and sing.’ And that was the way she operated — she wanted to help promote me into excellence, but the way she did it was all wrong.”

The show went on — and the roar of the crowd after The Judds’ performance served to bond mother and daughter. “The fans changed our lives, they changed our relationship,” said Wynonna. “They gave us hope, they gave us something to work toward. They gave us a sense of belonging that we didn’t feel otherwise.”

Unfortunately, not everyone was as ecstatic with The Judds’ success, particularly Naomi’s then-boyfriend, Strickland. When Naomi came off the tour bus in Nashville, Strickland was there to pick her up. When they got home, Strickland sat Naomi’s bags by the door, and she noticed the blinking light on her new answering machine. The message was from RCA’s Joe Gallante, who jubilantly congratulated Naomi with the news that “Mama He’s Crazy” had hit No. 1.

“The machine clicked off and Larry stood up and stiffly walked out,” Naomi wrote in her 1993 memoir, Love Can Build a Bridge. “Our relationship was doomed. I was ecstatic and sad, all at the same time.”

A sheepish Strickland, who later reunited with Naomi and became her second husband, copped to his petulance in a present-day interview for the docuseries, saying, “I was jealous as crap of her. We just kind of fell apart a little bit.”

Naomi’s Tall Tales

The Judds’ hits continued in great succession, but Naomi’s accommodating instincts — and inclination towards exaggeration—led to a complicated construction of a sometimes-misleading public identity.

“Mama adored her fans … and they loved her,” said Ashley. “The fans had an assumption because the Judds were in country music that they had conservative values. But her views were more unexpected and more complex than anyone can imagine. So I think there was a lot of earnest people-pleasing in terms of making a digestible, palatable package of herself.”

This wish led Naomi to make certain tweaks to The Judds’ life stories. “Each time she would go to a radio station or do a newspaper interview, it was just so hard for her to not embellish their biography,” recalled Bowles. “Where they had stayed … was it in a real cabin without electricity? Each time the story changed and became enhanced.”

Naomi’s tall-tale tendency irked Wynonna. “I think mom knew that I had her number,” she recalled. “There was part of me that would look at her and go, ‘Really?’ I had to go through media training — I was trained how to not roll my eyes. I wouldn’t answer the question because she would always embellish. … First of all, her accent — she’s making it a little bit more accent-y. Back then, I was so aggravated. Like, ‘Mom, c’mon — you gotta give me a break.’”

Young Ashley Felt Abandoned

The Judds’ hectic touring schedule took a toll on a teenage Ashley, who lived at home. As the duo planned to leave for yet another trip, Ashley broke down. “Before they went out, I got in [producer Don Potter’s] lap at the kitchen table and wept. And I did not speak, I just buried my face in his neck and wept and then I went back into my space, and then the Judds went on the road.”

Strickland was also on the road a lot. “I wasn’t home, and Naomi wanted Ashley to have a normal experience and be at a normal kind of home,” he explained. “Ashley felt left behind. She suffered because of that. It changed her, for sure.”

After being left home alone in the 10th grade, Ashley moved in with her father, Naomi’s ex-husband, Michael Ciminella — but his home wasn’t exactly suitable, either.

“My dad has always loved me very much but was prone to taking hallucinogenics — and I was affected by his using,” said Ashley. “At the time, he wasn’t able to stay home and look after me, I was alone in an apartment for a year. Then I put everything in my car and drove to Ashland and moved myself into my great-great-grandparents’ house. It was another one of those interventions that saved my life. My hunch is that the justification for abandoning came from the belief that I was this capable child, so nobody needed to take care of me. And both of my parents had those beliefs.”

Indeed, Naomi publicly referred to popular, well-rounded honor student Ashley as “my smart lady.” But Ashley was in the shadow of The Judds. “I felt invisible,” said Ashley. “I just fell through the cracks.”

Naomi Criticized Wynonna’s Weight

The Judds complemented each other but also brought out each other’s insecurities. “I think Naomi was scared to death that we were not going to keep her as part of this duo,” said Bowles, while Potter added that “Naomi was searching for any way she could contribute to the show,” including “by being pretty.”

The Judds’ differing views on what their images should be led to frequent clashes. Bowles said that Naomi wanted Wynonna to have “the WASP waist” and to “look as much like her as she could.”

Wynonna acknowledged her mother’s moxie. “She was 36 years old, she was ready to be fire,” she reflected. “As the kids would say today, she had drip. She was foxy. But then, I was so aggravated by her sexuality.”

Naomi was also responding to industry pressures that still exist today — and when Wynonna gained weight, their family feud escalated. Naomi would even make catty comments on talk shows, using the alibi of motherly wisdom.

“I think Naomi felt like Wynonna’s weight reflected badly on her as a mother,” said Bowles. “The two of them would lock themselves in the back of the bus, screaming and yelling. Several times, we had to cancel shows, because Wynonna had stripped her voice.”

Potter insisted that Naomi’s criticism of Wynonna came from a place of love, but that didn’t make Wynonna feel much better. “Mom was very hard on me. She was terrified of losing me, of course, but she never would say it that way,” she said. “It was always, ‘Well, if you lost 20 pounds, you could be a pop star.’”

Naomi Repeated Her Own Painful Past

Wynonna thought that Naomi was replicating the mistakes of her mother, Polly. “Same thing that Nonna did to her, sounded the same to me,” said Wynonna. “That’s why I would get so angry, because I knew it was being passed down.”

Strickland noted that Naomi’s desire to please her often-cruel mother continued well into adulthood — and stardom. “Naomi always wanted her mom’s approval and love, so she did everything she could, bought her cars, paid off bills. Her mom really enjoyed the celebrity,” he recalled. “Every time we would show up in Ashland, Mom would have all the neighbors come for Naomi to sign autographs and meet and greet. But I never did see Polly hug her or say, ‘I love you.’”

Wynonna Was Molested as a Child

All the talk about Wynonna’s weight was particularly painful to Potter. “All I wanted to do was cry, not because Wynonna had trouble with her weight, but because I knew why,” he revealed. “Things happened to her that caused her to not want to be attractive.”

Wynonna opened about her experience. “I was molested at 12, so my whole sexuality thing was stamped out, because I just shut down,” she revealed. “I carried the weight — literally and figuratively. If you look at the clothes of the Judds … I’m Amish basically. I’m wearing clothes to cover, not expose. To this day.”

Growing up with such a gorgeous mother compounded her fears. “Mom was so beautiful; men would follow her home — and that was always really hard for me because I saw it coming for me,” said Wynonna.

Wynonna and Naomi’s Frequent Clashes Made The Judds More Popular

“It was quite a surprise, but as it turns out, the things that were splitting them apart were also making them bigger and bigger,” noted Bowles.

Potter remarked that “even their fights were attractive, because they weren’t afraid to do it publicly.” Naomi would make jokes (“we put the fun and dysfunction”), and their verbal skirmishes made for great talk show fodder. “I think people were so interested in the friction between them because people had that same experience with their mothers and daughters,” theorized Bowles.

The result was even more fans. “You watched the fan base change post that — and you saw all of these women come in,” said former Universal Records CEO Cindy Mabe. “And gay audiences come in because the Judds were as real as they got.”

Ashley’s Horrific Rape and Naomi’s Shocking Reaction

In 1983, a 14-year-old Ashley was home alone when an adult man who identified himself as a “location scout” knocked on the back door and recruited the flattered teen to participate in a modeling competition in New York City. Since the modeling execs judged Ashley to be “kinda short,” they sent her to Japan. “And so I was sent as an unescorted minor to live alone in an apartment in Tokyo, Japan,” she said. “And when I landed, the modeling agency folks took me to the modeling agency and said, ‘Take off all your clothes and walk around.’ I was 14 years old — it was a summer of commercial sexual exploitation. The head of the agency molested me for the entire summer, a man raped me twice, another model sexually assaulted me. They just consumed my body. I wrote in my diary, ‘I wanted my teddy bear, I wanted to go to homecoming.’”

That diary led to an intense conversation with Naomi when Ashley returned to the family farmhouse in Tennessee. “Mom always went through my things and she found my diary and read it,” recalled Ashley. “In there, I talked about the times this French guy raped me twice. And [Naomi] got in my sleeping bag and said, ‘I read about you and your boyfriend.’”

Naomi’s accusatory tone was hurtful to 14-year-old Ashley. “I was a little girl, I was not a participant, I was a victim,” said Ashley. “And mom and I had a lot of these conversations later in life and her understanding of sexual assault and rape was not the perspective to which she grew and evolved — but she didn’t have that information and perspective. So, her reaction was to sneer at me. I was shut down. My own experience and reality invalidated and denied. Which in her heart today would be a very painful lament.”

Naomi’s Devastating Diagnosis of Hepatitis C

Naomi’s health took a mysterious turn for the worse in January of 1990. The symptoms initially led doctors to suspect Naomi had cancer, but a trip to a specialist at the Mayo Clinic would determine that it was hepatitis C. “It was very crushing for her,” recalled Ashley.

In typical form, The Judds’ Love Can Build a Bridge Farewell Tour became 1991’s most successful country music tour. “It was heavy, because I was watching her say goodbye every night,” remembered Wynonna. “And every night we’re going on stage, and I knew she was getting closer and closer to the end of the tour. The bus, the clothes, the shows — that was her world. So I just knew she would go into some sort of psychosis, because that was like the lifeline was being unplugged.”

As frightening as Naomi’s physical deterioration was, Wynonna was even more worried about her mother’s state of mind. “Quite frankly, I was afraid that once the tour ended, her life would end,” she stated. “I just knew in my heart of hearts … that she would probably kill herself.”

As Naomi Struggled, Wynonna and Ashley’s Stars Rose

Sick with hepatitis C, Naomi felt she could no longer carry on as a member of The Judds. The last night of the farewell tour divided the family’s lives into a “before” and “after.” Ashley recalled “crying really hard” for Naomi during the last night. “Her identity was so bound to being the mother in The Judds,” she said. “And so, I took that very hard for her.”

On January 27, 1992, Wynonna made her solo debut in front of a television audience of 35 million people at the American Music Awards. Her first album, Wynonna, became a massive hit, selling 5.5 million copies. Ashley’s star was also ascendant. Her first movie, Ruby in Paradise, was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. She followed up that star turn with roles in such films as the 1995 classic Heat with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

While Naomi was thrilled with her daughters’ successes, it also served to remind her what she was missing. “I think Naomi was exhilarated and sad at the same time, because I knew she wanted to be up there, to be on that stage,” said Strickland, recalling that she began experiencing terrible nausea and hair loss from interferon treatment.

“That’s really when the depression kicked in. She called her doctor and told him that she was gonna have to quit taking the shots, but he’d just gotten some new test results and he said, ‘Naomi, do not stop the shots. Your counts are going down.’ Miraculously, the interferon actually worked for her.” In 1995, doctors declared that Naomi’s hepatitis C was in complete remission.

The Shocking Scandal Behind Wynonna’s Paternity

People wanted to hear the miraculous story of Naomi’s recovery, so she felt inspired to write her first book, the memoir Love Can Build a Bridge. The book was a best-seller but also was greeted with backlash. In a review for Entertainment Weekly in 1992 titled “Country Crock,” music journalist Alanna Nash gave the book an “F” grade. “When she talks about conceiving Wynonna, she doesn’t say who the man who she’s with is,” said Nash. “And so, I felt … I bet ya here’s another lie — big lie.”

Nash’s suspicions were confirmed when she received a late-night phone call from Naomi’s first husband, Ciminella. “He told me that he had seen Wynonna on the floor playing when she was a little girl and he just knew he wasn’t her dad,” said Nash. “He told me he was going to give an interview and say that he was not Wynonna’s father. And I said, ‘Have you told Wynonna?’ And he said, ‘No,’ and I said, ‘Please tell her first — don’t do that to her.’”

Ashley recalled that her mother was “distraught” that her father was going to tell her sister the truth about her paternity. The news of Ciminella’s forthcoming paternity reveal reached Ashley, who demanded that her mother tell her sister the truth — or else she would tell her. “We made an appointment to see the family therapist and Mom couldn’t get the words out [to Wynonna], and I just told her,” said Ashley.

While undoubtedly shocking, the news also made sense to Wynonna. “I knew that Michael didn’t like me, and Mom didn’t really love him,” she said. “I saw a picture of my father from a tabloid, and I thought, ‘Wow, I look so much like him.’”

Wynonna’s father was Charlie Jordan, a handsome high school football star who was a year older than Naomi. “He was not a one-night stand: Charlie Jordan was a sexy young man,” recalled Cathy Napier, Naomi’s childhood friend. “Charlie was a sexual, physical attraction, but she loved him. My understanding is that she did tell Charlie Jordan that [Wynonna] was his.”

But Jordan went off to join the Army, and a pregnant Naomi was kicked out of the house, leaving her feeling like she had no choice but to accept Ciminella’s proposal — while also leading him to believe that he was the father of her future child.

“Look, I understand it, but I was really angry with her about it,” said Wynonna. “My understanding is that Charlie knew about me, and he always felt like he couldn’t do anything about it. For a while, I was ready to go meet him. What if he’s a jerk? What if we don’t make a connection? What if, what if, what if? Fear, fear, fear. But when I finally decided to, it was too late.”

Jordan died on August 10, 2000, at age 56. “After he died, his trailer was full of Judd posters,” revealed Potter. “Imagine [Wynonna] seeing that for the first time.”

A Reluctant Reunion

Following the paternity revelation, Wynonna’s life began to spin out of control. Her second album, 1993’s Tell Me Why, sold 2 million copies, while her third  effort, 1996’s Revelations, sold 1 million. Impressive numbers, but they paled in comparison to the numbers she sold with her first solo record — and with The Judds.

“Mom sent me a fax and she circled all the statistics and said, ‘You really need to be doing better,’” said Wynonna. “I don’t think Mom could ever accept the fact that I was on my own. I think there was always that thing of, ‘You still need me.’ At some point, I thought I was incapable by myself.”

In 1994, Wynonna was invited to perform at the Super Bowl — and she brought her mom to come out and sing “Love Can Build a Bridge” at the end. The reaction proved that there was still a large audience out there craving The Judds’ harmonies. This led to recurring reunions, like 2000’s The Power of Change tour, which sold out before they had even hit the road.

Naomi was excited to be back on the road with her daughter, but Wynonna was less than thrilled with the arrangement. “This is like a bad marriage, but I kept doing it,” she said. “I had no boundaries, bless my heart. Mom had such a chokehold on me that I was unable to put that aside and go, ‘That’s her problem.’ With Mom, it was always, ‘You can do better.’ If I lost 10 pounds, [it was] you need to lose 50.”

Wynonna Invited her Family to Join Her in Rehab

Wynonna sought out change by going to Onsite Workshops Inc., an all-addictions rehab facility. Onsite invited the Judd family to listen to the experience of her life, under supervision. “At the end of the week, the treatment team did an intervention on me and they said I was so angry, it preceded me into the room,” Ashley recalled. “I think a lot of the rage was about the secret of Sister’s paternity and all the machinations and the manipulation. It was the trauma, it was the commercial sexual exploitation in Japan, it was the unresolved childhood grief. Our family was marked by so much pain.”

When Ashley accepted the opportunity to confront her pain, Naomi was more reticent but agreed to participate in a grief workshop with Ashley. “She was afraid it would break her, that she wouldn’t come back from it,” the actress remembered. “After that, she never truly let go. She never felt in a safe enough place in a therapeutic setting, and it made her very hard to treat.”

A Repressed Memory

Naomi later wrote that a repressed memory was triggering her body’s reactions. “I am 3 and a half years old, and running a high fever. I hear the squeak of the floorboard. It’s a male figure looming in the hallway, but I know instantly, it’s not Daddy. … The mattress sinks down as the intruder climbs into bed beside me. I can smell hair tonic, cigarettes, musty body odor. I turned to see that it’s Uncle Charlie, my grandmother’s brother. He places his finger to his mouth and says, ‘Shh.’”

Naomi’s brother Mark expressed bitterness towards their parents for not revealing what he said was the truth, that his grandmother had two brothers (including Charlie) that were sexual predators. “My sister … she deserved better,” he said.

A Reality Show Revelation

Wynonna felt emotionally ambushed when Naomi shared her no-longer-repressed memory of being molested by her Uncle Charlie during a 2010 reality show. “I don’t know what she was expecting of me,” said Wynonna. “Sometimes Mom is clumsy in the way she tries to tell you stuff. I think that I was really disgruntled with the fact that we were doing this on camera. When you do something like this, there are 30 people behind the producer, and Mom and the producer were working together, planning stuff to get my reaction. So Mom had an agenda — and I think it really cost us and our relationship.”

Naomi’s Support of Ashley — And Tension With Wynonna

Naomi was a voice of support when Ashley opened up about her alleged experiences being sexually harassed by Harvey Weinstein in 1996 during the filming of Kiss the Girls. “Mom was really glad I got out of the room,” said Ashley. “She was not fond of Harvey — she called him a not-so-nice word — she called him a pig or something.” And when Ashley made the decision to be the named source in The New York Times’ 2017 exposé of Weinstein’s sexual misconduct allegations, she recalled Naomi imploring her to “go get him.’”

Alas, healing between Naomi and Wynonna seemed as unlikely as ever. Naomi learned of Wynonna’s 2012 wedding to Scott “Cactus” Moser from a People magazine story. Wynonna was also going in a new direction musically. Moser was not only her personal manager, he was also her new duet partner. “We were supposed to be partners until the end — the fact that I had a new partner … she was wrecked,” said Wynonna.

While Wynonna resumed her solo career, Naomi sank into an abyss of depression. “She began to get worse with her anxiety and panic,” said Strickland, “No sleep, pace the floor all night long, till 4 o’clock in the morning. She always would say, ‘There’s something wrong with my brain. I physically feel it in my head.’ She would say, ‘Somewhere, there’s got to be a pill.’”

Pills soon became part of her routine, among them benzodiazepines and Klonopin. “I don’t know how many different psychiatrists we went to and they would prescribe her everything that they had,” said Strickland. “I had clonazepam to give her — and we stopped giving them because she got hooked on them.” She’d end up having short stays in psych wards, but Strickland said she’d use her celebrity status to get out early.

“When she needed to detox off the benzodiazepines, that was a whole hullabaloo,” said Ashley, recalling a “comedic” incident in which she gave her mother a Tic Tac instead of the pill she’d hoped for.

Naomi Suffered Amid More Accolades

The Judds were selected to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2021. “The biggest worry was, The Judds are going into the Country Music Hall of Fame and only one of them would show up,” recalled Mabe.

The Judds performed together at the CMT Awards on April 11, 2022. Rewatching the performance on a computer tablet, Strickland was filled with mixed emotions. “It looks beautiful,” he said. “Of course, knowing what I know now, watching that, I have a totally different take on it. Obviously, she probably shouldn’t have been out there.”

Wynonna concurred, adding, “She wasn’t really there. It wasn’t her. She was somewhere else. I felt like she was scared to death.”

Naomi’s Suicide and the Emotional Aftermath

The Judds were scheduled to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame on April 30, 2022, so Ashley came home to Naomi’s farmhouse two days earlier. “On the evening of the 28th, [Mom] went to sleep and I went to sleep. When I woke up, I had a text from Mom that just said, ‘Please help.’ When I got there, Mom was very uncomfortable in her body, pacing around the kitchen and expressing that she didn’t want to be here anymore. … I put my hand on her leg and she patted me and she slowly softened and came back to herself and calmed down and shared a couple of things that I would say are private, between us, about why she chose to continue to live.”

Naomi then went upstairs, but when Ashley returned to check on her, it was too late. “When I rounded the corner, I entered her bedroom, and I saw that she had harmed herself,” Ashley recalled. “And then I spent the next whatever it was — half hour — just holding my mother and talking to her, and the first thing I said to her was, ‘It’s OK, I’ve seen how much you’ve been suffering.’ … When she died, my most earnest wish was to make sure that she was relieved and absolved of her guilt and shame.”

Ashley is forever grateful to have been there for her mother’s final moments. “It was like this final consummation of the love in the relationship that we had transformed,” she said. “What an honor, to be born into this human life, to be chosen by her. I got to hold space, I got to bookend. And I’m just so glad I was there.”

Naomi’s Law is a proposed bill to protect the privacy of deceased persons and their family members in cases of suicide. To support this legislation, please email the policy and advocacy office of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention at advocacy@afsp.org and mention bill SB009. If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.