Fans have shared their mixed reactions to Vanessa Hudgens quickly walking past her ex Austin Butler at an Oscars after party.
While they didn’t go to the event together, Hudgens and Butler, who dated for nearly a decade, attended Vanity Fair’s Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, following the 95th annual Academy Awards. On Sunday, Hudgens also co-hosted Countdown to the Oscars event on ABC, where co-host Ashley Graham was the one who interviewed Butler.
In a video obtained by US Weekly, Hudgens could be seen looking down and walking past her ex-boyfriend as he waved at fans who were outside of the after party. The clip, which was shared on Twitter, also showed the Elvis star smiling and blowing a kiss to fans while he stood next to Sharon Stone.
On social media, fans shared their shocked reactions to the exes’ interaction and praised Hudgens for opting to just walk past Butler.
“I never thought that I would read that or see those words or this picture,” one person responded to a tweet about the pair. “Wtf is happening.”
“This is my Everything Everywhere All At Once,” another joked, referring to the sci-fi film that took home seven Oscars last night.
A third wrote about Hudgens: “Queen behaviour.”
However, some fans expressed that the Disney Channel alum may not have been snubbing her ex in the video and that it’s not a surprise that they passed each other.
“She could have just stopped to say hi or was just passing by when the photo was taken,” one wrote. “People in the comments are just making stuff up.”
“They’re both actors of course they’re gonna be there,” another wrote, while a third added: “She’s literally just walking past him why are people freaking out.”
Since their breakup in January 2020, both of the actors are in new relationships, as Hudgens announced her engagement to baseball player Cole Tucker last month.
Butler is currently dating Kaia Gerber, who attended the Vanity Fair party with him on Sunday. However, she didn’t join him at the actual Oscars, as Butler told Graham in an interview that he wanted his “best friend” and “agent” at the event, since he “owes [his] career to him”.
At the Oscars on Sunday, Butler was nominated but for missed out on the Best Actor award for his performance in Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis. Following his nomination in January, he said in The Hollywood ReporterActors Roundtable that a “friend” had encouraged him to audition for that role.
After that, fans were quick to realise that the friend that Butler was referring to was actually Hudgens, who previously did an interview about how she was who told Butler about his resemblance to Presley. In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, Butler went on to the record straight and confirmed that his story was about The Princess Switch star, before praising their previous relationship.
“I was with my partner at the time,” he said, as he confirmed that his partner was Hudgens, adding: “That’s right. We’d been together for so long and she had this sort of clairvoyant moment and so I really, I owe her a lot for believing in me.”
During his interview with THR, he recounted how his peer, who he didn’t refer to as Hudgens, first urged him to play Elvis Presely in a movie one day.
“I was going to look at Christmas lights with a friend, and there was an Elvis Christmas song on the radio, and I was singing along, and my friend looked over at me and goes, ‘You’ve got to play Elvis.’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s such a long shot,’” he explained. “Then my agent called and said, ‘So Baz Luhrmann is making an Elvis film…’ The hairs just stood up on my arms. It made me go, ‘All right. It’s Everest. I don’t know if I’m good enough. But I’ve got to give it everything.’”
