ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

Exclusive: High School Musical star Zac Efron Talks with MediaVillage About the Making of the Movie and Its Smash Soundtrack
By Maya Motavalli
February 15th, 2006

Zac Efron, who stars as singer and basketball star Troy in Disney Channel's High School Musical, recently talked with Maya Motavalli of MediaVillage about the movie, its music and his on-screen kiss with co-star Ashley Tisdale. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.

MediaVillage: Are you like Troy at all?
Zac Efron: In some ways. We're as similar as we are different. Troy is like the star at his school. He's a basketball stud and a hot shot. I was not like that when I was in school. But the way he is around people is like me.

MV: What did you have to do to prepare for the role?
Zac: We had two weeks of rehearsal from morning to night. I had to do basketball practice constantly for [the song and dance sequence] Get'cha Head in the Game and all the basketball scenes. The whole team would run real basketball practice. And after that I would go straight to dance rehearsal and that was very difficult and time consuming. It was really tough because I'm not really a dancer.

MV: Were you surprised at how Breaking Free climbed? [This song, sung by Zac and co-star Vanessa Anne Hudgens, reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and remains No. 1 on iTunes' Top 10 Soundtrack songs list.]
Z: Absolutely! Listening to the song I had a sense that it was good, but when we were recording it I had no idea. I was very surprised.

MV: On my school bus everyone's listening to their iPods and everyone's listening to that song.
Z: Well, that's good to hear!

MV: Was your kiss with Ashley Tisdale your first on-screen kiss?
Z: [Laughing] Ahh… it was my first on-screen passionate kiss, I guess. It was not my first on-screen kiss. I had to kiss Kay Panabaker on [The WB series] Summerland. That was my first on screen kiss.

MV: Was it hard to do?
Z: No, I'm good friends with Ashley and we're cool about it. We were friends before the movie started. We knew each other before we even took the roles.

MV: What do you think the sequel for High School Musical will be about?
Z: I have no idea. There's no script out yet.

From Media Village