Vanessa Hudgens is opening up about her audition process for High School Musical!
The 36-year-old actress booked the leading female role of Gabriella Montez in the trilogy, which became quite the juggernaut for Disney.
While reminiscing with former co-star Bart Johnson on a recent episode of the Magical Rewind podcast, Vanessa dished on her chemistry with eventual co-star Zac Efron, whom she ended up dating for several years.
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“I was paired with this boy, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, he’s so cute,’” she recalled. “And so like the chemistry was so real.”
“I guess I was 15. I had done a pilot for Disney Channel called The Bus Life with Keke Palmer. It didn’t get picked up, and I had auditioned for Disney a bunch,” Vanessa shared. “I was like, ‘It’s never gonna happen for me.’ And this audition came up for High School Musical, and I was like, ‘I don’t wanna go. I’m not gonna get it.’ ”
“I went in begrudgingly and did the audition. It was a normal audition,” she added. “I don’t even remember what I sang…I think maybe I sang ‘Angels’ by Jessica Simpson or ‘Reflection’ from Mulan and did one of the scenes and then ended up getting a callback.”
As the process continued, she recalled the actors “got mixed and matched with a bunch of people.”
“I got mixed up and I think I got put with Zac [Efron] right away,” Vanessa said.
“Me and Zac did the scene together. I sang with him. I feel like he got paired up with somebody else as well. I don’t know. It all seems like such a blur,” she says. “And then I feel like a few weeks after that, I got the final callback, and it was, like, a final pairing where there was one other girl there for Gabriella, one other guy there for Troy, and we, like, swapped, mixed and matched. And that was it.”
“I got the call, and they were like, ‘We want you to do it.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my god. It’s finally happening!’” Vanessa said.
If you missed it, one star thought Vanessa resented them on the High School Musical concert tour…