Back in July 2022, Olivia Rodrigo fans were left shocked as they noticed she’d randomly followed Joshua Bassett on Instagram.
For some context, Olivia and Joshua — who played onscreen lovers in Disney’s High School Musical: The Musical: The Series — were heavily rumored to be dating in 2020, when the series premiered.
While neither of them ever explicitly confirmed their relationship, things appeared to get rocky in August 2020, shortly after Joshua was spotted on a lunch date with Sabrina Carpenter. Olivia seemingly addressed this in her hit single “drivers license,” which was released in Jan. 2021, and then later across her debut album SOUR — namely in the songs “deja vu,” “traitor,” and “good 4 u.”
Joshua eventually appeared to hit back at Olivia with scathing lyrics of his own, seemingly accusing her of sensationalizing the drama around their supposed split for publicity. He later revealed that he’d actually been hospitalized shortly after the release of “drivers license,” after experiencing stress-induced heart failure.
In spite of all this, Olivia and Joshua eventually appeared to be on good terms by the end of July 2022, with the pair playfully posing together at the Season 3 premiere of HSMTMTS.
However, a few weeks prior, Olivia found herself in some hot water after fans noticed that she’d randomly started following Joshua on Instagram.
Given that Olivia famously follows no one on the platform, it was super obvious to fans when she hit the follow button by Joshua’s name on July 3. As you can probably imagine, people were left super confused by it all and took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to express their thoughts.
In fact, some people even wound up speculating that Olivia’s Instagram had been hacked as a result of the bizarre move.
Meanwhile, others guessed that the random follow was a “mistake” Olivia had made while lurking on Joshua page.
Well, it turns out that this was exactly the case, with Olivia admitting during a new appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that she got caught “stalking” her ex.
Olivia began by explaining why she chooses not to follow anyone on Instagram, telling host Jimmy, “I try to follow zero people because it helps me be off of my phone, you know, off of social media.”
However, she went on, “I had this very embarrassing encounter once where I was stalking my ex — as one does, sue me, sorry — and I accidentally followed him because I was stalking him.”
As fans were well aware at the time, Olivia pointed out that because she doesn’t follow anyone on the platform, it was “super obvious” when she accidentally followed Joshua.
“I was just following one person so it was super obvious that I was following him, and my friend ran into my room like, ‘Oh my God, did you mean to follow him?! Unfollow him!’ And I went and grabbed my phone like, ‘Shit, oh my God!’” she recalled.
Then, to make matters worse, Olivia revealed that her phone actually died as soon as she went to unfollow her ex.
“I went to open the Instagram app, and the second that I opened the app, my phone died!” she recounted.
“I couldn’t find a charger so I was just following my ex for a while. It was quite embarrassing,” she added, before joking that she played into the speculation that her account had been hacked.
