Olivia Rodrigo set the internet ablaze with her song Drivers License, and while many fans wanted a response from Joshua Bassett — the supposed target of the diss — he was actually in the hospital.
When it comes to Disney’s High School Musical: The Series, the drama extends beyond the fictional East High School. With rumors flying regarding a supposed relationship between co-stars Olivia Rodrigo and Joshua Bassett, the turmoil even made it onto Saturday Night Live.
As Rodrigo continues to break records with her album, Sour, Bassett is well on the way to cementing himself in the TikTok hall of fame for his fun-filled videos.
Finally opening up to GQ on all of the Disney Channel drama, he’s confessed that drama surrounding Rodrigo’s now-iconic track, Drivers License, may have caused him so much stress that he actually almost died.
Joshua Bassett talks about almost dying
In the wake of Drivers License’s insane success, fans automatically assumed that the song’s lyrics were aimed at Bassett and, in turn, that the pair’s non-existent relationship had come to a close. Two days after the song dropped, he was admitted to the hospital with septic shock and heart failure.
The star told GQ that he “started getting very ill, and it kept getting worse. I thought it was, like, food poisoning or whatever. It got worse, it got worse, it got worse, it got worse.”
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Noting that “I’m sure stress had a part in it,” he was hospitalized and informed by doctors “that I had a 30% chance of survival. They told me that if I had not checked into the hospital within 12 hours, I would have been found [dead] in my apartment.” A video from his time in hospital can be seen below.
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As the rumors swirled and the world continued to push for Bassett’s response to Rodrigo’s supposed digs, he “didn’t have any energy to be able to focus on anything but staying alive.”
While Bassett appears back to his usual self and urges fans to “focus on these women [Rodrigo and co-star, Sabrina Carpenter] for who they are… instead of their relationship to a boy,” the incident is a reminder that there’s always more going on than meets the eye.
