Here’s why Ashley Tisdale ‘never thought’ HSM costar Zac Efron was ‘hot’

On the recent episode of Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, Ashley Tisdale revealed that she ‘never thought’ High School Musical costar, Zac Efron, was hot.

Tisdale, 37, played Sharpay Evans in the HSM movies, whereas Efron played Troy Bolton.

“It's because I was friends with him before the movie,” she told host Amanda Hirsch of Efron. “He was way younger than me. He was like a brother, too.”

While Tisdale never had felt any physical attraction towards Efron, she did admit that there was one time when she found the Baywatch actor quite desirable.

“I think the one time where I was like, ‘Oh, OK. S—. Yeah, he looks hot,’ was the Rolling Stone cover,” she recalled of Efron posing in a white t-shirt on the cover of the magazine in 2007. “I was like, ‘Now I understand.’”

“I think I just knew him too well and had been best friends with him for so long that it's like your brother that you're hanging out with.”

Back in 2020, Tisdale also admitted that Efron was her worst on-screen kiss.

Speaking to Elle, He Said She Said singer shared, “I’ll tell you why it was the worst. I had to kiss Zac Efron at The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, and it’s the worst because I’m so close to him and he’s like my brother…”

The kiss happened in a 2006 episode of the show, while the first High School Musical film came out in January of that year.

“At the time, he was used to working on Warner Brothers which is CW, and we were on the Disney Channel. So, he tried kissing me with his tongue… I was like ‘Get away from me!’,” she explained. “I closed my mouth so fast! I was like, ‘This is Disney Channel! We don’t kiss like that on Disney Channel!’”

“It’s just weird when you’re so close to somebody,” she continued. “We’d already done the movie. I’d known him for years before! That is why it was the worst. It’s just, we’re too close.”