Vanessa Hudgens is looking back fondly on her past romance with High School Musical costar Zac Efron.
Appearing on the Wednesday, October 1 episode of the “Get Your Head in The Game with Bart Johnson” podcast, Hudgens, 36, reflected on their “real” chemistry while working on the films.
The actress, who is now married to Cole Tucker and expecting her second child, shared that she and Efron were paired up even before casting was finalized.
Hudgens shared her memories of the audition process and said of the final callback, “There was one other girl there for Gabriella, one other guy there for Troy. We swapped, mixed and matched and yeah, that was it.”
She admitted that she loved being paired with Efron, 37, at the time.
“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,” she said.
Hudgens and Efron’s characters, Gabriella Montez and Troy Bolton, were love interests in all three movies and the chemistry ultimately turned into an off-screen romance. Away from set, Hudgens and Efron confirmed they were dating in 2007 before eventually announcing their split in 2010.
During her podcast appearance, the actress confirmed that their real-life chemistry amplified the on-screen chemistry for their characters.
“Yeah, it really does [help],” she said, adding, “Especially when you’re young and it’s all sweet and innocent.”
The podcast isn’t the first time Hudgens has touched how easily the pair clicked when they first met.
“We got lucky because we started off together, so I think people like us because they fell in love with the characters,” Hudgens told Glamour of her then-boyfriend during a June 2010 interview. “Right off the bat, we had a connection. I think everybody could see it. When we had our audition, they paired us together. And he was adorable. I mean, he wasn’t the guy that he is today. Like, he had a gap in his teeth.”
Efron also previously noted their early chemistry in the audition rooms during an interview with Disney in 2007.
“For all of the partner things, me and Vanessa always got paired up,” Efron said at the time. “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.”
Although it’s been over a decade since the former couple called it quits, Hudgens has always appeared to be grateful for her romance with Efron in that phase of her life.
“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,” Hudgens said during an April 2019 appearance on the “Always Chatter” podcast. “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, and I had someone to lean on who was going through it as well.”
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