Zac Efron and Garrett Clayton are Basically the Same Person

I, a 21-year-old adult, is still a HUGE fan of the High School Musical franchise. In high school, had I been a better planner, I would have asked Lucas Grabeel to be my prom date. And even though I was older than most viewers, I did love Teen Beach Movie when it came out.

In this post, I am going to explain how Zac Efron and Garrett Clayton are basically the same person.

Let's start at the beginning. You may know Zac Efron as Troy Bolton in the Disney Channel Original Movie (or DCOM), High School Musical and it's franchise. He is the attractive blue-eyed, protagonist of all three HSM movies. And I will admit that I was a huge fangirl for him in my youth. Honestly, now I can't stand him. But that's for another post. Zac portrayed Troy in all three HSM films, but he only sang in the last two. That's right. Zac Efron did not sing in the first HSM movie. That was the amazingly talented Drew Seeley whom I will love till the day I die.

Similarly, Garrett Clayton played Tanner in DCOM, Teen Beach Movie and Teen Beach 2. Also, surprise he didn't sing in the first movie. The voice you are hearing is Spencer Lee, whose voice made me falsely fall in love with Garrett.

Both actor's careers were pretty much jumpstarted by Disney Channel Original Movie series. And in the first movie of said series, neither actor sand for their character. There was another actor brought in.

Now, this is where the parallels get weird in my opinion.

In 2007, after the success of the first High School Musical film, Zac Efron was cast as Link Larkin in the Hairspray musical movie. This is the first time we got to really hear him sing. He turned out to be pretty good, in my personal opinion.

In 2016, following the success of Teen Beach Movie and Teen Beach 2, Garrett Clayton was cast as Link Larkin in NBC's Hairspray Live! This was the first time I got to hear him sing. Honestly, wasn't impressed, but that's just my opinion.

Both actors were once young attractive Disney stars whose careers were very much helped by successful DCOMs and both actors were granted the opportunity to play Link Larkin in some form of Hairspray. So they are basically the same person but in two separate universes.

Though Garrett hasn't received as many film roles as Zac, he's still fairly new since Teen Beach Movie only came out five years ago and High School Musical came out over ten years ago.

But I will say of the two, I prefer Garrett. Mostly because Zac said he regretted doing High School Musical, and as someone who has loved those movies for the better half of my life, I am offended. Without HSM, Zac wouldn't even have found the fame he has.

Though I do prefer Zac's Link over Garrett's, but I won't get into that too much. If you want me to compare Hairspray Live! and the Hairspray movie, I'll be glad to do so on another post.

In the end, my heart really belongs to Seaweed J. Stubbs, especially Elijah Kelley's and Ephraim Sykes portrayals of Seaweed. Maybe I'll write a post about Hairspray because I haven't written about a musical in a while.

I hope you get to see the big picture. I have been plotting this post for over a year and I finally did it after procrastinating.