Vanessa Hudgens Praised By ‘Grease

Just hours before the live event, late on Sunday morning, Hudgens tweeted, “I am so sad to say that last night my daddy, Greg, passed away from stage 4 cancer”.

So, did you watch Grease Live last night on FOX? Hudgens’ boyfriend, Austin Butler, tweeted afterward that her rendition of “There Are Worse Things I Could Do” had him “in tears”. Along with John Travolta’s Danny and Olivia Newton John’s Sandy, Stockard Channing’s Rizzo is the version of the character most widely known thanks to the 1978 film version of Grease. The performance also came hours after Hudgens’ father passed away making her commitment to the job more admirable as per the fans’ and critics’ posts.

The attention was well deserved: “Grease” smartly embraced the “live” idea by incorporating a studio audience, bringing the show closer to an actual theater experience (something that felt distinctly lacking from NBC’s “The Wiz” in particular). “There’s also this scary part where it’s like, ‘Well I thought I knew all the words until I actually really looked at the words – and I’ve been singing it wrong this whole time!” Imagine if you had the day she had & then performed like that. Wow.

Fox’s first live musical averaged 12.2 million viewers on Sunday, according to the network.

With this hectic, ambitious and hormonal “Grease”, Fox proved it could up the ante in the new mini-industry of musicals on TV, an industry so far controlled by NBC, with its “The Sound of Music Live!”.

“I am devastated. Just thinking of my girl and praying for her strength today”, Ashley Tisdale penned. “So sorry for her loss & inspired that she will perform tonight’s @GoGrease in her fathers honor”, Kesse Tyler Ferguson added.

Any father would be so proud of such a talented, accomplished daughter, who, of course, knew that the show must go on.

After a courageous Grease: Live! performance, 27-year-old Vanessa Hudgens won hearts of fans all over the world.