When Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License” exploded in the early days of 2021, many people used context clues to determine that the song was about Joshua Bassett, Rodrigo’s ex-boyfriend and co-star on the Disney+ TV series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Neither Rodrigo nor Bassett ever confirmed this, but it was a common assumption that this led to rather negative attention for Bassett. In a new interview, Bassett says the stress from the “driver’s license” cases has brought him to the hospital.
Bassett tells People he fell ill after several days of rampant online investigation, including death threats on social media. For a week, “every day I felt worse and worse.” Bassett says he slept 16 to 20 hours a day and couldn’t get up more than 30 seconds. When he released his single “Lie Lie Lie” six days after the release of “Drivers License” — he says it was previously planned and not written in response to Rodrigo’s song — instead of excitement, “I felt my heart literally failed. I thought, ‘This isn’t just fear. This is bad.'”
A producer on the TV show took Bassett to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with septic shock. He says doctors told him he would have died at his home if he had waited 12 more hours. After nine days in the hospital, he returned home and immediately began having panic attacks on a daily basis again. Bassett credits yoga, meditation, and therapy with helping him overcome the ordeal. Hopefully he hasn’t listened to the rest of Sour.
In related news, Rodrigo’s concert film Driving Home 2 u is coming to Disney+ tomorrow.