Austin Butler was forced to explain why he called Vanessa Hudgens controversial term despite seven-year relationship

Austin Butler was once forced to explain a surprisingly controversial term he used to describe ex Vanessa Hudgens, claiming his intentions had only ever been good.

Butler, 32, and Hudgens, 35, dated for nearly a decade, but eventually decided to call it quits in early 2020.

Hudgens later got with professional basketball player Cole Tucker, tying the knot in 2023 before welcoming their first child together last month.

Butler, meanwhile, is currently dating model Kaia Gerber, who he’s been with since 2021.

Of course, when you have a famous ex, people will always want to know about your past romances.

Vanessa Hudgens and Austin Butler were together until 2020 (Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

During a Hollywood Reporter roundtable interview last year, Butler had referred to Hudgens – a woman he’d been with for seven years – as his ‘friend’.

Chatting about playing Elvis in Baz Luhrmann's 2022 biopic, he said: “The month before I heard that [director Baz Luhrmann] was making the movie, I was going to look at Christmas lights with a friend, 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,’” he said.

“A couple of weeks later, I was playing the piano,” he added. “I never really sang for any of my friends or anything. That same friend was there and I was playing the piano. She said, ‘I’m serious. You gotta figure out how you can get the rights to a script.’ Then my agent called and said, ‘So Baz Luhrmann is making an Elvis film.’”

Naturally, it didn’t take long for the internet to pick up on his reference to Hudgens.

“Him calling Vanessa Hudgens a ‘friend’ PLEASEEEE,” one person wrote on X.

His comments were met with backlash at the time (X)

However, Butler later clarified that he’d had good reason to use that specific word.

In an interview with Esquire a few months back, he admitted it had simply been a way of protecting Hudgens.

“Oh, yeah, I learned a lesson with that one,” he said.

“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.”

He continued: “I have so much love and care for her,” explaining that he wasn’t trying to ‘erase anything’.

“I value my own privacy so much,” the star added.

“I didn’t want to give up anybody else’s privacy.”

He’d also previously clarified to the LA Times that he had, indeed, meant Hudgens when he said he’d been with his ‘friend’.

“I was with my partner at the time,” he confirmed.

“We’d been together for so long and she had this sort of clairvoyant moment and so I really, I owe her a lot for believing in me.”