High School Musical: The Musical: The Series creator on Season 2's similarities to Olivia Rodrigo's real-life: "We shot that 10 months ago"

TheWrap

Creator Tim Federle acknowledges the “remarkable similarities” between Nini’s trajectory this season and Rodrigo’s on-screen rise, but he chalks it up to the star’s undeniable talent as a songwriter and performer. “Sometimes I feel like we should release a date stamp on some of these episodes,” Federle tells The Wrap. “Because in reality, we shot that 10 months ago.” In a separate interview with EW, Federle adds: "Man, it's so crazy. We wrote that 'Rose Song' story maybe six or seven months before 'Drivers License' was even released. With the cadence of how TV rolls out, stuff can feel very fresh, and it was decided or filmed like months and months, if not a year, before. It's a wild amount of symmetry....Sometimes it looks like an eerie parallel and other times I just chalk it up to the fact that there's a reason Romeo and Juliet is still a relevant story about love. It's because these themes of heartbreak and attachment and identity are timeless, which is why every series is doing their own variation on them." ALSO: Federle talks filming Season 2 amid the pandemic.