Vanessa Hudgens and Austin Butler were seen crossing paths outside the Vanity Fair Oscar party on March 12. The exes, who dated for eight years before their split at the beginning of 2020, had a brief reunion while departing the bash. They were photographed in the same frame, proving just how close they got to one another, although the context of any conversation they may have had is unclear.
Austin was at the VF party with his now-girlfriend, Kaia Gerber, although she was M.I.A. when he was photographed leaving. Austin and Kaia have been dating since the end of 2021. Meanwhile, Vanessa recently got engaged to her boyfriend, Cole Tucker. She was solo on Oscars night, but her engagement ring was sparkling on her left hand in photos from the evening.
Earlier in the night, Vanessa co-hosted ABC’s red carpet show for the Oscars. Austin was an attendee on the red carpet, but he avoided his ex by doing his ABC interview with her co-host, Ashley Graham, instead. Kaia did not attend the Oscars with Austin, as he brought his best friend and manager as his plus one. Austin was a Best Actor nominee for his role in Elvis, but lost the award to Brendan Fraser, who took it home for his performance in The Whale.
Austin started filming Elvis in 2019 when he was still dating Vanessa, and he recently credited her with inspiring him in the role. “We’d been together for so long an she had this sort of clairvoyant moment, really,” Austin admitted in a recent interview. “So I really…I owe her a lot for believing in me.”
The “clairvoyant” moment that Austin was referring to happened before he even knew the Elvis movie was being made. “I was going to look at Christmas lights [with Vanessa] and there was an Elvis Christmas song on the radio,” he explained during a roundtable for The Hollywood Reporter. “I was singing along, and [she] looked over at me and goes, ‘You’ve got to play Elvis,’ and I said, ‘Oh, that’s such a long shot.’ A couple weeks later, I was playing the piano. I never really sang for my friends or anything. [She] was there and I was playing the piano, she said, ‘I’m serious, you gotta figure out how you can get the rights to a script.’ Then my agent called and said, ‘So, Baz Luhrmann is making an Elvis film…'” Along with the Oscar nomination, Austin also won a Golden Globe for his role in the movie.