‘High School Musical’ stars share memories at FanX nearly 20 years after filming hit Disney movie

“High School Musical” stars Corbin Bleu (Chad), Lucas Grabeel (Ryan), KayCee Stroh (Martha) and Bart Johnson (Coach Bolton) returned to Utah on Friday to talk all things “High School Musical” with fans at a FanX panel.
It’s been nearly 20 years since the cast filmed the first “High School Musical” movie at East High School in Salt Lake City in 2005. None of them expected the film to have such an enduring impact on fans.
“Every actor dreams of catching lightning in a bottle and to have something become a classic and then see it passed on from generation to generation,” Stroh told the audience. “Thank you for doing that. It’s such a beautiful thing.”
Looking at a crowd of roughly 5,000, Grabeel added, “This is so wild. We’re talking about 20 years and there’s still this many people that want to talk about ‘High School Musical.’”
Johnson wiped tears from his eyes as Bleu told fans how “High School Musical” was just as impactful on the cast as it was on the fans.
“I mean, it’s just as much a part of our childhood,” he said. “(The movie) continues to be a part of just the musical theater canon, and just I cannot be more grateful for it.”
When asked by a fan what it was like filming on set at East High School, Bleu said he recalled seeing the Salt Lake City campus for the first time and feeling, “floored, because it’s truly stunning, it’s beautiful.”
“Salt Lake City is home now to one of the most iconic high schools, and it’s a real high school,” he said.
Bleu continued, “What’s amazing is I have more visceral reactions to seeing that high school than I do to my own high school.”
“When we went back for ‘High School Musical: The Musical: The Series,’ I hadn’t been back to East High since we shot the original movies, and walking into that gymnasium — immediately, just tears started flooding into my eyes, and I could not believe the incredible memories and just what a wonderful space that we had to work in.”
KayCee Stroh heard about the role of Martha from a choreographer she worked with on her competitive dance team. Stroh was told casting directors were looking for actors of “all different shapes and sizes and colors.”
The day Stroh auctioned for the role in Utah, she was up against 500 others hoping to be cast as Martha. Auditions has already been done in New York and Los Angeles, but the role hadn’t been filled.
After her audition, “Kenny (Ortega) walked over to me, and he grabbed my hands and he said, ‘I love you. You’re different,’” Stroh told the audience. “My whole life, I had fought against was actually what made me stand out that day.”
Martha was originally written to appear in just the “Stick to the Status Quo” performance, but directors wanted to give Stroh more screen time.
The night before “We’re All In This Together” was filmed, Stroh got a phone call asking her to be a part of it.
“I learned the dance the night before, and they threw me in,” Stroh said.
“Darbus said I had a song in the first one that got cut by Disney,” Johnson revealed to the audience. “They cut that sucker!”
He compared the Coach Bolton-Ms. Darbus number to “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better),” and “Annie Get Your Gun.”
Their reason for cutting the performance?
“They said, ‘We don’t want to see the old people dancing,’ It’s mean. It’s a mean thing to say,” Johnson said.
To play the role of Chad, Bleu needed to prove he could play basketball. Except, he couldn’t play basketball, at all. “I still can’t play (basketball),” Bleu told the audience.
Before his audition, Bleu went out and bought a jersey, basketball shorts and basketball to wear in. His dad helped him learn to dribble the ball.
Bleu’s dance skills carried him in the “Get’cha Head in the Game” routine, but it, “probably took, like a good seven takes” every time he had to actually shoot the basketball.
“I’m very proud to say that that ball I carried that with me every day for the next … four years that we would we shot these three movies and I slept with the thing,” Bleu said. “I’m not joking, that was with me every single moment of the way. So I was 100% committed.”