Vanessa Hudgens is making sure that Gabriella Montez gets her high-school reunion. Just shy of 15 years after the world’s favorite Wildcats graduated from East High in High School Musical 3: Senior Year, the 33-year-old actress paid a visit to the real-life high school she and her castmates filmed what’s possibly still Disney Channel’s most famous franchise in a nostalgic Instagram post.
In a wistful Monday (June 27) video, Hudgens walks up and down the front lawn of Salt Lake High School East before approaching the camera, flashing two peace signs and smiling. All the while, a snippet of her and HSM costar Zac Efron’s famous duet “Breaking Free” plays.
“Do you remember in kindergarten how you’d meet a kid and know nothing about them, then 10 seconds later you’re playing like you’re best friends because you didn’t have to be anything but yourself?” she wrote in her caption, a direct quote from the 2006 High School Musical film.
Quite a few fans commented that the video had made them tear up. Meanwhile Bart Johnson — who played the father of Efron’s character Troy, Coach Bolton — wrote, “I saw this and had a PTSD like I couldn’t find my team captains LETS GO WILDCATS!!”
Hudgens’ latest post is actually not the first time in the past couple months that she and her fellow Wildcats have gotten sentimental over their East High days. In May, Efron said he hoped to be a part of a reunion for the films, and confessed that his “heart’s still there.” Hudgens also recently opened up on The Kelly Clarkson Show about how vividly she remembers meeting Efron and castmates Ashley Tisdale and Lucas Grabeel.
The Tick, Tick…Boom! star also had a bonding moment at this year’s Met Gala with Olivia Rodrigo, who stars in the Disney + series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series — which, it might be worth noting, is filmed at the same school Hudgens visited in her new video. Rodrigo’s character, Nini, attends Salt Lake High School East and at one point plays Gabriella in her theater group’s production of High School Musical, about which Hudgens told Rodrigo on the red carpet: “I always feel like I have such a connection to you because of that!”
See Vanessa Hudgens make her East High return below:
