Vanessa Hudgens is opening up about the early days of her whirlwind romance with Zac Efron.
The actress recently appeared on iHeartRadio’s “Get Your Head In The Game” podcast, where she shared a rare look back at how their relationship began while auditioning for High School Musical. “There was one other mami there for Gabriella, one other guy there for Troy. We swapped, mixed and matched and yeah, that was it,” Vanessa explained.
Looking back, she admitted the sparks were instant. “Coming from a musical theater background, that was and still is where my heart remains. So, I was very excited,” she said. “Of course I was a child and paired with this boy and I was like, ‘Oh my god, he’s so cute.’ The chemistry was so real.”
That connection, she revealed, carried over on-screen and off. “Yeah, it really does [help]… especially when you’re young and it’s all sweet and innocent,” Vanessa said, reflecting on their undeniable bond. “It’s so funny looking back, I was so innocent but I was also playing so innocent, so it was like the hat on the hat. Like, wow, she’s really pure. That totally was who I was, but the little rebellious teen side of me was like, ‘No, this isn’t me!’”
Zac himself once echoed those memories. “For all of the partner things, me and Vanessa always got paired up,” he told Glamour in 2010. “I was like, ‘They’re not trying us with other people.’ For some reason, we kept sticking around [for callbacks]. I don’t know what it was with Vanessa, but we kind of clicked from the very beginning.”
The pair dated from 2005 until 2010, right in the middle of High School Musical’s massive success. For Vanessa, that romance provided a sense of stability during an overwhelming time. “I could not have been more grateful to have that relationship at the time … It was this massive phenomenon and [all] eyes were on me,” she admitted on the “Always Chatter” podcast in 2019. “And it’s just a really weird foreign thing to go through, and by being in a relationship, it kind of kept me stabilized and grounded.”
Since then, the Princess Switch star has had her fair share of high-profile relationships, including her nearly decade-long romance with Austin Butler. “The public only sees so much,” she told Nylon in 2022. “I’ve also been through two very long life-changing relationships, and no one really knows what happened except for me. When I write my memoir, it’ll be amazing.”
immediately, Vanessa has officially moved on — she’s married to baseball player Cole Tucker, and the couple are expecting their second child. .
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