Ashley Tisdale had one hilarious surprise when she decided to peek into her family tree! The High School Musical star discovered she is related to one of her best friends, who is also one of her bestie’s exes, on the latest episode of Ancestry’s “2 Lies & A Leaf” series. The best friend was Austin Butler, whom Ashley learned is her 10th cousin, and his ex was Ashley’s HSM co-star Vanessa Hudgens!
“Austin and I always say that we’re like fraternal twins born very far apart ’cause he’s much younger and we’ve always had that connection,” Ashley told her sister, Jennifer Tisdale, during the show. “We’ve always said we were brother and sister! That is insane, I’m literally going to cry.”
The 37-year-old Hollywood vet went on to refer to the Elvis star, 27, as her “best friend” before adding, “I’m telling you when we first met, I was like ‘Oh my God.’ We were like brother and sister from the minute we met.” She then called Austin, who, upon hearing the pair were related, exclaimed, “No f**king way!”
Ashley and Austin first met way back in 2011 when they played love interests on a HSM spin-off film called Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure. Austin and Vanessa began dating that same year and were an item for almost nine years.
Speaking of Ashley’s character Sharpay, Ashley recently sent the internet in a meltdown when she teamed up with TikTok star Chris Olsen on for a special rendition of “I Want It All” from the third movie in the High School Musical franchise.
And just a year prior, Ashley teamed up with Vanessa to post TikTok videos of themselves singing to the movie’s biggest hit song, “We’re All in This Together.” Ashley captioned the cute clips, “If you need to work out while on #selfquarantine try this 😂 hopefully this will brighten your day a little!” Vanessa, who played Gabriella Montez in the franchise, followed up by writing, “Well. It’s come to this. Lol @ashleytisdale maybe I start getting into tik tok?”