Vanessa Hudgens covers the latest issue of Nylon for seemingly no reason. It doesn’t seem like she has anything specific she’s promoting right now. She has a few projects in development and then the article namecheck some of the other companies she’s affiliated with, like her water, cocktail line, and skin care line. The woman really knows how to hustle and keep her name in the news. The interview was pretty detailed and wide-ranging, touching on topics like Vanessa’s past and future career, her relationships, and plans for the future. Some parts were illuminating, but others seemed like a teaser for a future interview, especially the part about her relationships.
On therapy and setting boundaries: Hudgens has been working on herself a lot in the past few years. “I woke up at 27 like, ‘I have no idea who I am, what I want, or what I stand for,’” she says. Her Saturn return had snuck up on her. She started a form of therapy called shadow work that involves unlocking your unconscious mind to confront negative or repressed parts of yourself. It involved a lot of uncomfortable conversations. “I realized how much of myself I gave away to others, when I actually was giving away and turning off pieces of myself,” she says. “When you get older, the sexier boundaries are.” “I’m at that point now where I’m like, ‘F*ck anyone who doesn’t f*ck with me,’” she says. “You either f*ck with me or not; it’s cool with me either way. But I f*ck with myself, so that’s all that matters.”
On entertainment: When she was young, she says, her ambitions were, “If it’s not going to win me an Oscar, I don’t want to do it.” “But then you grow up and you’re like, entertainment is entertainment, and I think that there’s a time and place for everything.” She points to The Princess Switch series, annually one of Netflix’s most watched films come the holiday season. “I just think about when I was a kid, how many times my sister and I watched The Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan, and I was just like, ‘This is my Parent Trap.’ And it’s Christmas, which is so iconic — to have a little Christmas moment.”
On her relationships: She is heading to Arizona in the morning to visit her boyfriend, Arizona Diamondbacks player Cole Tucker, whom she met during a celebrity meditation Zoom group. “I’m not going to call it a celebrity Zoom, but it was a Zoom meditation group that Joe Jonas put together, yes,” she says. “I did not expect it at all. I don’t think if I entered a meditation Zoom, I’d be like, ‘This is where I’ll meet my person.’ I just showed up and I was like, ‘Who the f*ck is that?’” Still, she notes, “The public only sees so much. I’ve also been through two very long life-changing relationships, and no one really knows what happened except for me. When I write my memoir, it’ll be amazing.”
On the future of her career and personal life: Hudgens could see herself hosting a talk show one day. “I love what Kelly Clarkson’s doing. It’d be so fun to have a show where I could have a band and sing things, where I talk to people about things that I’m interested in that they’re professional at,” she says. “That would be nice for when I have kids and want to stay in one place and have the closest I will ever have to a 9 to 5. It’s that or being on Broadway.” (On the topic of kids, she says, “I always thought I would be married at 25, because that’s when my mom got married, and then when that didn’t happen, I was like, ‘Oh, OK. So we’re just going to shift everything back a bit.’ I always thought that around 36, 37 is when I would want to have kids, and that still plays. I don’t feel panicked about it.”)
I always have and still do like Vanessa Hudgens. And I always felt bad that her early photo leaks seemed to derail her career, so I’m glad she’s still around and seems to be having a bit of a resurgence of late. I appreciate what she says about entertainment for entertainment’s sake and there being a time and place for everything. Though I do like some “prestige” TV and movies, I dislike the idea of guilty pleasures and highbrow/lowbrow entertainment. It’s snobbish! People like what they like and if people relate to certain entertainment, it has value. I also think it’s interesting that she’s talking about potentially hosting a talk show. Vanessa’s done a lot of red carpet hosting recently and much of the article is dedicated to her skill at that. That would be interesting career move for her and she’d be great in that format (or on Broadway honestly, she is a good live performer).
I liked a lot of what Vanessa said in this feature. I think we all reach a certain point as we get older where boundaries become more important and we’re also just like “whatever” about whether or not people like or f-ck with us. I wonder if that sentiment in particular sheds any light on the two relationships she mentions. Things with her current boyfriend seem stable, but the two “life-changing” relationships where “no one knows what happened” are obviously Zac Efron and Austin Butler. The former was a long time about, but the latter is very intriguing because they broke up a couple of years ago, I think while he was filming the Elvis movie. And on a recent red carpet Vanessa hosted, pains were taken to ensure that it was the other host and not Vanessa who interviewed him. So there might be drama there and I’m here for it if she decides to write that memoir.
I don’t know why so many kids seem to think 25 is the magical age at which one should be married and have kids. My college bf thought that too so that he could “have kids young” but it puts so much pressure on people to pick your career! pick your spouse! right out of college and then how many people realize 10 or 15 years later that actually I’m not suited for that job anymore or wow I ignored so many red flags in that person for the sake of settling down or even just wow parenting is WAY harder than I ever expected and I need therapy. I’m always happy to hear people going on their journey and realizing those arbitrary timeline goals are not how you should be making major decisions!
Agree, so much. If I had held myself to that timeline, I’d be divorced; my early 20’s boyfriend was a disaster that took me 7 years to extricate myself from. I didn’t meet my husband until I was 26 and he was 30, and we married two years after that (and had our first child two years after that, at 30 and 35.) I think that having time to know ourselves as adults prior to becoming a couple, and generally being more settled and mature is a big part of the reason that we’ve been happily married for nearly 20 years. I was so different at 22 than at 27, but by my mid-late 20’s, I was largely who I am to this day.
I want her to have a reality show. She just seems interesting
Pink is her color.