Austin Butler relents, credits psychic ex Vanessa Hudgens with Elvis premonition

After conspicuously calling Vanessa Hudgens a "friend," Austin Butler admits his former "partner" had seen Elvis in his future

By Mary Kate Carr | January 26, 2023 | 2:53pm

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Austin Butler relents, credits psychic ex Vanessa Hudgens with Elvis premonition

Vanessa Hudgens and Austin Butler Photo: Dia Dipasupil

Austin Butler’s road to the Oscars has been uniquely fraught—or, as he puts it, “highs have been so high and then the lows so low.” The pandemic hit at the beginning of Elvis’ production, extending his time in The King’s headspace. He permanently altered his voice (“I think that there’s certain muscular habits that must pop up,” he says mildly in a new Los Angeles Times interview) and actually needed to be hospitalized when the movie wrapped.

The press tour hasn’t been any respite: he’s been in promo mode since the Cannes Film Festival in May 2022, and now that the finish line is finally in sight, he has to field constant questions about the death of one of his biggest cheerleaders, Lisa Marie Presley. Plus questions about his girlfriend’s ex (Jacob Elordi will play Elvis in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla). Plus questions about his own ex, Vanessa Hudgens.

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The latter, at least, Butler brought upon himself when he told a story during The Hollywood Reporter Actors’ Roundtable about how one Christmas a “friend” noticed him singing along to an Elvis tune and said, “You’ve got to play Elvis.” It may have gone unnoticed if not for the fact that Hudgens herself had told the story on Live With Ryan And Kelly back while they were still together.

Twitter being what it is, the denizens of the Internet immediately began to clown on Butler for referring to his partner of nine years as a “friend.” (Hudgens herself seemed to enter the discourse by commenting that she was “crying” over the whole Elvis Voice issue.) Lest the subject become yet another yoke around his neck, Butler quickly cleared up the identity of his “friend” during his nominations-morning chat with The L.A. Times.

Asked about the THR anecdote, Butler clarified that “I was with my partner at the time.” When the Times asked if that was indeed Miss Hudgens, he replied, “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.”

Finally, credit where credit is due—though how much credit Hudgens deserves for simply gazing into the future is up for debate. (She at least deserves credit for being more than just a “friend,” doesn’t she?) In any case, we can add this to the growing list of Hudgens’ supernatural abilities, alongside being able to talk to ghosts. (Seriously.) And if Butler is lucky, it’s one awkward topic of conversation he can cross off the list of talking points for the final stretch of his Elvis campaign.