Coachella queen Vanessa Hudgens hung up her floppy hat this year and decided to sit out the California music festival.
“The walking sounded aggressive. It’s a lot of walking,” Hudgens, 35, who is currently pregnant with her husband Cole Tucker’s first baby, said of her decision during a Tuesday, April 23, interview with Bustle.
Hudgens has long been a fixture at Coachella. She’s known for wearing outfits befitting the free-spirited nature of music festivals, rocking feather hair extensions, flower crowns and flowy clothing over the years.
During an April 2019 interview with W magazine, the actress noted that she’d been to the event at least 10 times and reacted to her reputation as the queen of Coachella.
“I mean, whenever you are called the queen of anything, it’s very flattering, so I will take the title. But, I think that people think of Coachella as something different than what it is to me,” she explained. “People think that I have a stylist dressing me and that I get makeup done and have security. I literally try to go as under the radar as possible and dodge around like a ninja.”
Hudgens has also spoken about the sense of freedom she feels at the music festival.
“It’s such a fun place to dress however you want and I definitely do,” she told E! News in April 2022. “It’s really nice to be seen. That’s what we all want: to be seen and feel safe to express ourselves. Coachella has always been a place where I’ve felt safe to express myself.”
Hudgens shared a throwback photo of one of her 2022 Coachella looks — a knitted pink bikini top paired with matching wide-leg pants and a flowy button-up blouse — while telling her Instagram followers she’d be skipping this year’s festivities.
“No Coachella for me this yearrrr. Hope y’all are having the time of your lifeeee,” she wrote via Instagram on April 13 during the festival’s first weekend. Coachella’s 2024 performers included Lana Del Rey, Sabrina Carpenter, Suki Waterhouse, Ice Spice, Grimes and Doja Cat.
While Hudgens didn’t feel up for attending Coachella this year, her pregnancy hasn’t been slowing her down all that much. She debuted her baby bump at the Oscars in February, interviewing stars on the red carpet while rocking a black turtleneck dress that hugged her growing stomach.
More recently, she posed for an Instagram mirror selfie in a skintight brown dress before a “date night” with Tucker, 27.
Hudgens and Tucker confirmed their romance in February 2021 and got engaged in December 2022. They tied the knot in Tulum one year later. Hudgens has said that she saw a future with the baseball player from the beginning.
“I knew,” she recalled during an April 2023 appearance on Today. “After our first weekend together, I called my sister and was like, ‘I think I just found my future husband.’”
