The “High School Musical” actress’ dad died of cancer, though rather than pulling out of the gig, Hudgens dedicated her performance to her proud papa’s memory.
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Hudgens shared the sad news with her millions of fans on twitter, saying, “I am so sad to say that last night my daddy, Greg passed away from stage 4 cancer”. Maybe it was the sheer amount of sets (The gymnasium alone was huge, and I think I full-on gawked at the carnival at show’s end), but Tveit, Hough, Vanessa Hudgens as Rizzo flat-out did more work than anyone in Peter Pan or The Sound of Music.
“Imagine if you had a day like @VanessaHudgens & performed like that. Wow”. I looked at her in the eyes and said can you do this?
The live event starred Julianne Hough and Aaron Tveit as Sandy and Danny, along with co-stars Keke Palmer, Kether Donahue and Carly Rae Jepsen.
Journalist Scott Neumyer tweeted: “Seriously INSPIRED performance by @Vanessa Hudgens tonight”.
Like its recent predecessors, Fox leaned on a lot of Broadway DNA during its visit to Rydell High.
We once tipped Vanessa Hudgens as a future Oscar victor and, after seeing her performance in Grease: Live!, we believe that now more than ever. Sure, the light date-rape humor of lines like, “Tell me more, tell me more: Did she put up a fight?” are ever so slightly tone deaf, but, again: No bad Australian accents!
Hollywood actress Vanessa Hudgens is in mourning following the death of her father.
“Vanessa said that her dad really wanted to watch her do this because Grease was one of his favorite films of all time”. Two years later, she jump-started her acting career by playing a supporting role in Burlesque with Christina Aguilera and Cher. “My new hero”, costar Mario Lopez tweeted.
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From the moment singer Jessie J burst into the title song and the camera followed her as she snaked her way backstage, past cheering extras and out onto the street, you knew “Grease: Live” was not a typical musical. The idea of one being broadcast on live TV is so much fun and judging by all of the excitement it generated online, it seems there’s definitely an audience for live musicals to become a regular thing.
