Passing on the torch! While hosting the 2022 MTV Movie & TV Awards, Vanessa Hudgens offered a unique take on the Euphoria vs. High School Musical debate.
“Apparently high school musicals have changed since 2006. Euphoria High does not do it like East High did. There’s a lot less singing, a lot more hair pulling and a lot more cleavage,” Hudgens, 33, joked after a skit where she portrayed Sydney Sweeney‘s character Cassie Howard before the HBO star, 24, took the stage on Sunday, June 5.
The Spring Breakers star rose to stardom playing Gabriella Montez opposite Zac Efron‘s Troy Bolton in Disney Channel’s High School Musical. Hudgens starred in the franchise’s first three films from 2006 to 2008 and took part in the High School Musical: The Concert tour.
Hudgens later revealed that she had no plans to reprise her character in a potential fourth High School Musical film. “It was such a beautiful moment in time that so many people do hold so close and near and dear to their hearts, that I don’t know [if I’d return],” she told Entertainment Tonight in November 2021. “It’s scary to mess with something like that, because it is so beloved. Someone’s got to write a script and send it to all of us, and if we like it, then who knows?”
The California native’s costar and real-life friend Ashley Tisdale echoed the hesitation to return to East High.
“I just feel like I wouldn’t be able to really do that again and give it justice,” Tisdale, 36, told ET in August 2021 about playing Sharpay Evans again. “You know what I’m saying? I think at that moment in time, I was very unaware of myself and my surroundings, and I feel like that’s a big part of Sharpay. She is just not really aware, and so as I grew up and became more aware, I think that it’s just something that it wouldn’t be the same.”
She added: “It’s so good, and it’s like, for me, I would hate to ruin something that is perfect for that moment, and yeah, I don’t think I could go back to it.”
Euphoria, however, made headlines earlier this year after D.A.R.E. questioned how the series tackles drug use. The educational organization expressed in a statement that they were worried about the show “misguidedly glorifying and erroneously depicting high-school student drug use.”
In response, Zendaya defended Euphoria after starring as Rue since its 2019 debut. “Our show is in no way a moral tale to teach people how to live their life or what they should be doing,” the Emmy winner, 26, told Entertainment Weekly in February. “If anything, the feeling behind Euphoria, or whatever we have always been trying to do with it, is to hopefully help people feel a little bit less alone in their experience and their pain. And maybe feel like they’re not the only one going through or dealing with what they’re dealing with.”
At the time, the Malcolm & Marie star recalled having “a lot of people reach out” about Euphoria reflecting their own lives, adding, “So many parallels with Rue and her story and Rue means a lot to them in a way that I can understand, but also maybe in a way that I could never understand, and that means that means the most to all of us.”
