Austin Butler Shares Why He Initially Didn’t Credit Ex Vanessa Hudgens With Inspiring Elvis Role

Austin Butler is clearing the air. 

Over a year after facing backlash for not crediting ex-girlfriend Vanessa Hudgens' role in his drive to play Elvis—instead referring to her as a "friend"—the 32-year-old set the record straight.

"Oh, yeah, I learned a lesson with that one—I felt that I was respecting her privacy in a way and not wanting to bring up a ton of things that would cause her to have to talk," Austin told Esquire in an article published on Feb. 6. "I have so much love and care for her. It was in no way trying to erase anything."

While the Dune: Part 2 star later made clear that Vanessa—whom he dated from 2011 to 2020—inspired him to pursue the role of Elvis Presley in the Baz Luhrmann-directed movie, he initially told an abridged version of the story. 

"I was going to look at Christmas lights with a friend," Austin—who has been dating Kaia Gerber since 2022— said during the Hollywood Reporter's Actors Roundtable last January. "And there was an Elvis Christmas song on the radio and I was singing along and my friend looked over at me and goes, ‘You've got to play Elvis.'"

Fans on social media quickly pulled out receipts, pointing to a nearly identical story Vanessa—who married baseball player Cole Tucker last year after three years of dating—had told in 2019. 

"Last December, we were driving along and we were listening to Christmas music, and then an Elvis Presley Christmas song came on," the 35-year-old recounted on a Aug. 2019 episode of Live! With Kelly and Ryan. "He had just dyed his hair dark. He's a natural blonde, and I was looking at him and he was singing along and I was like, ‘Babe, you need to play Elvis.'"

And his initial snub of the High School Musical alum is not the only headline Austin has made throughout his Elvis journey. The Masters of Air star raised eyebrows after seeming to be unable to shake the voice he took on to play The King of Rock ‘N'Roll. 

"There's no denying you create habits," Austin added to Esquire of his voice. "I had been practicing one way of using the muscles in my mouth for a long time, so it was a process of trying to unlearn those." 

Read on for every time the Oscar nominee has to address his distinct Elvis accent.

Before Elvis was released in June 2022, Austin Butler warned moviegoers that he couldn't exactly shake his transformation of Elvis Presley off. "At this point, I keep asking people, ‘Is this my voice?' because this feels like my real [voice]," he told Entertainment Tonight the same month. "It's one of those things where certain things trigger it." 

When signing up for the Elvis role, Austin had one goal in mind. "When I began the process of this, I set out to make my voice identical to his," he told The AU Review in May 2022. "That was my goal, that if you heard a recording of him and heard a recording of me, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference."

After Austin's publicist warned him about the conversation on social media surrounding his accent, the actor made it clear he was "getting rid" of it. It just won't happen overnight. "I have probably damaged my vocal cords with all that singing," he said on BBC One's Graham Norton Show in February 2023. "One song took 40 takes."

Still not satisfied with Austin's explanation? He has another reason. "I guess after three years of doing everything that I could to focus on this one goal of trying to bring life to Elvis in this film, I think that there's certain muscular habits that must pop up," he told the Los Angeles Times in January 2022. "If I was trying to sound like Elvis, I would sound very different right now. I think it's sort of amusing to me how much people want to focus on this one thing."

After winning the 2023 Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama Film, the actor was asked about his accent again backstage. "I often liken it to when somebody lives in another country for a long time," he explained in the press room. "I had three years where [Elvis] was my only focus in life, so I'm sure there's just pieces of my DNA that will always be linked in that way."

"What you saw in that Golden Globes speech, that's him," Austin's voice coach Irene Bartlett told ABC's Gold Coast in January 2023. "It's genuine, it's not put on. I feel sorry people are saying that it's still acting [but] he's actually taken [the voice] on board. I don't know how long that will last, or if it's going to be there forever."

Perhaps the secret to bidding farewell to the accent is earning a new acting role. "I know that I'm constantly changing," he told ELLE Australia in June 2022. "Check in with me in 20 years when I've played a lot of roles, who knows what I'll sound like!"