Vanessa Hudgens Reveals She Wanted To Audition For ‘American Idol’ Before ‘High School Musical’

Vanessa Hudgens revealed she almost auditioned for "American Idol" right before she tried out for a role in "High School Musical." The singer-actress opened up about how it panned out in an interview on "The Kelly Clarkson Show."

"I grew up doing theater, and this has always been a passion of mine, and you were on American Idol, and you won, and I was like, 'That's it, I'm going on American Idol, and then that next week, I got an audition for High School Musical and booked it, so then I was like, 'Well, never mind,'" Hudgens told Clarkson on Tuesday’s episode. "I was like, 'I'm doing it,' and you were the catalyst."

The 33-year-old also recalled the many auditions she had to pass before finally being cast in the Disney TV movie series, the first part of which hit the screens in 2006.

"I remember all the auditions, definitely, 'cause there were a lot of them," Hudgens said. "There were, like, three, but I remember them distinctly."

She continued, "I remember meeting Zac [Efron] for the first time, meeting Lucas [Grabeel] for the first time. Me and Ashley [Tisdale] had already met 'cause we did a commercial together a month prior. But it's wild. The time just keeps flying."

Despite the fact that it has been over 15 years since the show premiered on Disney, Hudgens still feels just as excited about doing musicals as she did during the first.

“It’s so weird to me that it’s that long ago because I feel like when I go to work, and when I — especially when I get to do a musical, I still feel the same excitement and joy and passion for it as I did then,” Hudgens said in a previous interview with ET in September 2021. “I feel like my job — it turns me into a big kid. I get to be a big kid because I’m playing pretend.”

Talking to Clarkson, Hudgens said she is taking a backseat as far as recording music is concerned, adding that she wants to do jazz music when she eventually returns to the studio someday.

“I had it sit back for a second and like, figure out what it is that I wanted to do,” she narrated. “I felt like if I was gonna do it again, I had to be like, really authentically myself.”