Bart Johnson says High School Musical was "terrible" for his career early on

Bart - whose alter ego's son was Wildcats member Troy Bolton (Zac Efron), the protagonist in the 2006, 2007 and 2008 movies - told TMZ: "When the movie came out, it wasn't great for me.

"I'd already been acting for a long time. I'd had a TV series with Warner Brothers from the guys who did Thirtysomething. I had a body of work already, and then I did this movie, and I think there was like this kind of - you're put out to pasture when you start being a dad on a Disney show.

"And I was like, 'Whoa, what's happening?'?And back then, there wasn't a bunch of streamers. There weren't a lot of places you could go.

"I was trying to get on a cool series on HBO. That was like the one really cool spot back then, 20 years ago. And they're like, 'Oh, the dad from Disney? No, we don't want.'"

High School Musical became a hit when it premiered on the Disney Channel in 2006 - delivering 7.7 million viewers in the US, a record rating for the network, and it became the first TV movie soundtrack to top the Billboard Top 200 chart.

But, for Bart, he did not benefit from its success until 2016, when the film's later cult status revived industry interest.

The star explained: "Everybody's like, 'Oh, wow, did this really blow up your career?' ?And I was like, 'Actually, no, it's terrible.' For like 10 years, it was terrible.

"And then the movie, I don't know what happened, like it changes categories when it becomes like a phenomenon or something I don't know, or it's like a cult classic.

"The last 10 years have been amazing, because some of my Wildcats are out there as studio heads and showrunners on series, and they're calling me, going, 'Oh, we got to get coach in for this role.' ?I'm like, 'I'm all about it. Let's go.' So it's been great."

He added: "They didn't do any special advertising like any other movie, and when it premiered, it was the most-watched cable movie in the history of television. That blew me away."

Twenty years after High School Musical's release, it is still one of the Disney Channel's top franchises - with all three movies being among the most popular Disney Channel Original Movies on streaming platform Disney+ in 2025, globally and domestically.

And fans of High School Musical recognise Bart more so now than when the movie first came out in 2006.

He said: "I'll walk through the airport, and I'll get stopped 10 times. It's wild, and sometimes they're little kids. They were born after the movie came out, which is super fun."

Bart - who has daughter Kate, 20, and sons Baylen, 22, Wyatt, 17, with his 53-year-old wife, actress Robyn Lively - added: "And then I guess taking my kids to school at elementary school, like, two weeks later, and there were 400 kids on the playground.

"I was like, 'What the heck's going on?' And then the school was like, 'Hey, you can't come here anymore.'?It was like a problem.

"It's so fun to travel around the world, especially when it's like a country you least expect, like a small town in a country on the other side of the world, and people have this reaction of like, 'Coach, what are you doing here?' ?And they're freaking out. It's so fun."