All in this together! Ashley Tisdale revealed the secret ingredient to maintaining her strong friendship with lifelong bestie Vanessa Hudgens 13 years after High School Musical premiered.
“We just have a connection and she’s so awesome and one of my best friends,” Tisdale, who recently partnered with the Women Who Know campaign, exclusively tells Us Weekly. “What I love about her is that she’s so talented, and I think what we share is that we’re really grounded people and I think that that’s important, especially with what we do, is to stay grounded.”
Tisdale, 34, and Hudgens, 30, starred alongside each other in Disney’s High School Musical franchise from 2006 to 2008. The Spring Breakers star also had a brief recurring role on the “Symptoms” singer’s former Disney Channel series, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. The pair even scored their own E! special, Vanessa & Ashley: Inner Circle, in 2013.
The dynamic duo have remained very close despite not having the opportunity to work together in recent years. Fans can often spot glimpses of the gal pals across each other’s Instagram pages, most recently when Tisdale posted a hilarious throwback of the pair on July 11 that showed them eating McDonald’s together in her car.
Fans might not know this, but Tisdale and Hudgens met well before becoming costars in the High School Musical franchise.
“We actually worked together a year before in a Sears commercial, and from that day on we were super close,” Tisdale explains to Us. “So people don’t really — I think some people know that, but they think it was that movie that brought us together and it really wasn’t.”
Tisdale is no stranger to gushing about Hudgens. In May, she opened up to TooFab about the pair’s friendship, saying: “We are like the ultimate duo. We have a very genuine friendship and you don’t see that.”
The pair’s admiration for each is not one-sided whatsoever. The Second Act actress told Women’s Health in 2017 that Tisdale was “one of those girlfriends who will be my friend forever.”
With reporting by Marc Lupo
