Austin Butler Shares Why He Didn’t Credit Vanessa Hudgens For Urging Him To Play Elvis

It’s been a year since Austin Butler faced some backlash over not giving his then-girlfriend, Vanessa Hudgens, credit for convincing him he needed to play Elvis. They had dated from 2011 to 2020, and internet sleuths put two and two together after hearing both Butler and Hudgens tell the same story about how he got the role.

Now he’s explaining to Esquire that he was trying to protect her privacy in preventing her from having to talk about it since she has moved on and married baseball player Cole Tucker.