Zac Efron really had his head in the game and his heart in the song while filming High School Musical.
The beloved actor recently sat down with Vanity Fair to revisit some of his most famous films, including the 2006 Disney Channel Original Movie that skyrocketed him into superstardom. In HSM, Efron plays Troy Bolton, a star basketball player at East High School who must make a decision between continuing his life as an athlete or persuing his passion as a performer.
Upon watching the scene for the song, “Get’cha Head in the Game,” in which Efron and his cast mates sing and dance, while also performing basketball stunts, the actor revealed that the stunts were all real. “I really drilled all those shots. No CGI in there, I don’t think we had the budget for that. That makes me feel good,” he shared.
Efron continued, ”That just takes me back to where all of us were at, all the young men on that team. We were so young and so incredibly motivated. Not a lot of people know this, but High School Musical was just a made-for-TV movie and it was a very small, condensed shooting schedule. There was very limited rehearsal time.
“Kenny Ortega had pretty big ambitions for this movie, but I think he was pleasantly surprised when all the boys were excited to not only fulfill what he wanted, but also to take it one step further. This scene with the basketballs and the dribbling, we started practicing with the basketballs and I think we might have practiced for two days prior to doing that scene. After like five takes, we nailed it. We got it all in one. We didn’t cut from start to finish.”
Efron concluded by noting, “I think that was the first time all of us went, ‘Is this going to be cool?’”
Watch Zac Efron react to High School Musical, as well as films like Neighbors, A Family Affair, The Greatest Showman and The Iron Claw, below.
