Who is Olivia Rodrigo?

Gen Z is obsessed with Olivia Rodrigo, the star of the ultra-meta High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.

Rodrigo’s record-breaking debut single “Driver’s License” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It has the best first-week streams of a debut single by a female artist with 76.1 million U.S. streams and 38,000 downloads.

The moody, chill song about pining over your crush quickly won over fans, and now Rodrigo looks like she’s headed toward superstardom. 

She’s an actress best known for her work on High School Musical: The Musical: The Series.

Rodrigo was born on Feb. 20, 2003, in California and is 17 years old. Her first acting gig was in the movie Grace Stirs Up Success based on the American Girl book series. She also starred on the Disney series Bizaardvark alongside Jake Paul.

Rodrigo is perhaps best-known for her role on High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, which premiered on Nov. 8, 2019. The show takes a meta-perspective on the popular movie franchise.

Rodrigo stars as Nini Salazar-Roberts, a student at East High School, a fictionalized version of the school where the High School Musical movies were filmed at. In the show, East High School puts on a musical version of the movie musical and Nini is cast as Gabriella Montez.

Her song “All I Want” went viral on TikTok in 2020.

In the HSMTMTS television series, Rodrigo sings the breakup song “All I Want.” Last year, she shared a video of herself listening to the song with quite the shady caption.

“You think u can hurt my feelings? I wrote this song,” Rodrigo said.

A version of the song sung by another TikToker was the soundtrack for a viral TikTok trend in which users shared the brutal messages guys have sent them.

She was rumored to be in a relationship with her HSMTMTS co-star, Joshua Bassett.

After Rodrigo’s “Drivers License” went viral on TikTok, fans thought it was a clue. They believed Rodrigo was hinting at a past relationship with her on-screen love interest Joshua Bassett that ended because he cheated on her with Girl Meets World’s Sabrina Carpenter.

The lyrics of the song described the other woman as “that blonde girl” who is “so much older” — Carpenter is 4 years older than Rodrigo.

A few days later, Bassett released what many felt was a diss track called “Lie Lie Lie.” The video did not go over well with fans who supported Rodrigo and thought he was behaving in poor taste.

He later clarified what the song was about without ever mentioning Rodrigo. 

“I wrote ‘Lie, Lie, Lie’ after I found out a friend had been lying about me behind my back for a long time,” he wrote, according to Seventeen. “It always sucks to hear that someone you thought you could trust would throw you under the bus when it benefits them. It happens to all of us, and I think all you can do is seek out people that build you up rather than tear you down.”

If you enjoyed this story, read about former Disney star Bella Thorne.

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