When her breakout song “Drivers License” dropped in January, Rodrigo was busy filming High School Musical: The Musical: The Series season 2, and as she watched her single dominate charts and break record after record, she didn’t let that success change her daily life.
High School Musical: The Musical: The Series showrunner Tim Federle felt a “parental pride” watching her music career skyrocket overnight.
Rodrigo has been hard at work on her follow-up to “Drivers License” with her album Sour as East High puts on a performance of Beauty and the Beast.
“The success of the music I’ve put out recently has given me a lot of confidence as a writer and in the other songs that I’ve written like the rose song,” she says.
The “hopeful” song tackles feeling misrepresented, which is something Rodrigo knows well from her life in the public eye, since her Disney Channel days on Bizaardvark to the past few months of intense internet rumors about her love life.
Long-distance may not be what fans wanted for that relationship so soon after a full season of will-they-won’t-they, but Rodrigo loved seeing Nini step out of her comfort zone and make this big decision for herself — and not for any relationship.
That was a conscious decision on Federle’s part to make Nini the star of her own story.
It’s a lesson that gave Rodrigo major deja vu, as she found herself relating to Nini’s arc more than she anticipated as she watched “Drivers License” take off on such an unexpectedly global scale — even getting her own SNL sketch and upcoming musical appearance on May 15.
“I’m feeling so grateful because I really did get my start writing songs on High School Musical — I’ve always been writing songs since I could like literally speak but Tim was the first person who really gave me my first shot at writing something that had the opportunity to be heard by a ton of people,” she says.
A version of this story appeared in the the May issue of Entertainment Weekly, which you can order now or find it on newsstands.