The Olivia Rodrigo/Sabrina Carpenter/Joshua Bassett Love Triangle Drama Continues
After Sabrina Carpenter's new album shared her side of things, Olivia Rodrigo and Joshua Bassett were spotted together on the red carpet.
If you've never heard of Olivia Rodrigo's "Driver's License," what have you been doing for the past year and a half? The song—which debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100— amassed over 67 million streams on Spotify within its first week and broke the record for most Spotify streams in a single day for a non-holiday song with over 15 million streams, before surpassing that benchmark the following day with over 17 million. At 17 years old, the young star struck listeners with her mid-tempo pop ballad about getting her driver's license. However, with Swiftian lyrics alluding to a love triangle, fans were quick to put the pieces together as to who inspired the hit song.
The story begins on the set of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, a Disney+ mockumentary style show in which Rodrigo stars as Nini. The scripted series follows a group of students attending the same high school where the film High School Musical was shot. The school's new theater director—a superfan of the original movie—announces "High School Musical: The Musical" as the kids' fall production and casts Nini as Gabriella alongside her ex-boyfriend/love interest Ricky (Joshua Bassett) as Troy. Here's where thing's get interesting.
In the show, Nini and Ricky's chemistry is unmatched, which many fans interpreted as actual romance between Rodrigo and Bassett. However, when the show began filming in February 2019, Rodrigo was only 16, while Bassett was 18. While the two never confirmed anything, many fans believed that they were keeping their relationship a secret until she was no longer a minor.
To further flame the rumor mill, in early 2020, Bassett released his debut single, "Common Sense," in which the singer describes a relationship that he knows he should leave, but he can't because he's so in love. Conclusions were drawn.
However, in summer 2020, Bassett released the music video for his new song, "Anyone Else." While many believed the song was about Rodrigo, the video featured a blonde love interest with long white nails. Though a minor detail, fans were quick to point out that fellow Disney alum and singer Sabrina Carpenter—a blonde—posted photos with similar nails around the same time.
A month later, the Carpenter and Bassett were spotted having lunch in Los Angeles together. Shortly after, Rodrigo posted a picture on Instagram in which she and her friend (Iris Apatow, sister of Euphoria actress Maude Apatow) are posing in t-shirts that read, "Dump Him." More conclusions were drawn.
After months of little to no online interaction between Rodrigo and Bassett, speculation that he and Carpenter were now an item rose again around Halloween when the maybe-couple shared TikToks of themselves dressed as Sharkboy and Lavagirl.
Fast forward two and a half months later to January 8, 2021, Rodrigo drops "Driver's License." In the song, she recounts driving around, thinking about her former love who taught her how to drive and how he broke her heart. She sings, "you're probably with that blonde girl / Who always made me doubt / She's so much older than me / She's everything I'm insecure about." Note: Carpenter is 21.
The breakout song, which Taylor Swift gave her seal of approval, has taken over social media, namely TikTok. Gen Z's fascination with the song and drama behind it has spiked the platform's #driverslicense up to over a billion views.
Less than a week after the release of "Driver's License," Bassett dropped his own song, "Lie, Lie, Lie." On social media, the actor said, "I wrote 'Lie, Lie, Lie' after I found out a friend had been lying about me behind my back for a long time." While many have inferred that the tune is in direct response to Rodrigo's pointed lyricism, a video on Bassett's Instagram from 2019, predating the current teen love triangle, shows him performing the same song.
For Carpenter's part, she released her own song, "Skin," which seemed to give her take on the situation.
However, in May 2021, Rodrigo's debut album Sour featured a number of breakup ballads that seemed to detail her relationship with Bassett as well as their breakup.
Later that year in December 2021, Bassett dropped an EP that included two songs, "Crisis" and "Set Me Free," which seemed to accuse Rodrigo of capitalizing on fan support and using it to hurt him, both professionally and personally.
To make things even more interesting, Carpenter and Rodrigo were photographed chatting at the 2022 Met Gala.
In July 2022, more than a year after the drama began, Carpenter really opened up about how the viral outrage and negative comments from Rodrigo's fans impacted her in her new song "Because I Liked a Boy." She sings, "Now I'm a homewrecker, I'm a slut / I got death threats filling up semi trucks...All because I liked a boy."
As for Rodrigo and Bassett, it seems these two may have patched things up. In late July 2022, the pair were photographed together on the red carpet for the Season 3 premiere of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. The exes were all smiles and laughs in front of the camera, forcing fans to wonder if they've finally put the past to bed.
