Zac Efron and Emily Ratajkowski Share Their Sweet First Impressions of Each Other

POPSUGAR: Obviously you guys know each other well now, but what were your first impressions of one another when you first met?

Zac Efron: Ooh, good question.

Max Joseph: Yeah, we haven't really ever talked about the first time we met. You [to Zac] came in, your energy was a little low. You were kind of quiet, and I was expecting high-energy Zac Efron. I thought something was on his mind. I thought maybe you were having an off day, in a weird way, and it was really interesting. I liked it. He was quiet and thoughtful about something else.

PS: Which is sort of how the character is too.

MJ: Yeah, and I kind of leaned into that. I was like, that's really cool, and I don't think anyone has seen a side of him like that. There was some major inner life happening in there.

ZE: I think what was on my mind at that moment, and what's always on my mind when I first meet for a project, is, what does it mean to me? There was something profound about the sizzle reel that Max sent, and I had not read the script yet, but I was just caught up in how much I was really engaged with the material. And that's always scary, because it feels like you might be committing to something.

Emily Ratajkowski: It's like going on a first date with someone you already know you want to marry.

ZE: Yeah, exactly.

PS: Emily, what were your first impressions?

ER: I met Max first, and I have to be totally honest, I had not seen Catfish, and I was just not totally convinced about the whole thing. I was kind of feeling a lot of trepidation, not sure about the character, but he was very much — now the images I see of Max behind the camera, holding it, that was my first impression. That image.

PS: And what about when you met Zac?

ER: With Zac, I have to say, I had no preconceptions. You know, again, I hadn't seen High School Musical, I was fresh to it, and he's just a super professional dude. When we did our chemistry read, it was like, you're a really great actor. Which, to me, made me even more excited about the project. And I'm not bullsh*tting when I say this stuff. Both cases are totally honest first impressions.

ZE: I was a little intimidated when I met Emily for the first time. She was coming off of working with incredible directors, and was out of nowhere —

MJ: Emily's also never intimidated by, like, anything.

ZE: Anything! She's super smart and inquisitive all the time. She knows a lot about a lot of things.

MJ: Most people would come in a little nervous. Not Emily, though.

ZE: Not Emily. She was so prepared, and we immediately had our chemistry.

PS: Zac, your character, Cole, is in the middle of the hustle, just starting his career — did this role make you kind of nostalgic, or make you look back on your early days in Hollywood?

ZE: It was oddly reminiscent of them [those days], for specific reasons. If you took music out of the equation and put acting in, I sort of ran around with a crew of hustling actors. We were all on our own paths, some of them were hustling harder than others. I was somewhere in the middle. I wasn't really like the head of the pack, I wasn't trying to be the party or anything like that, but I also wasn't, you know, the runt. I was just one of the guys. I found several mentors, and I had some good luck, and I found my way.

PS: Can you guys talk about the party scenes? I'm really curious as to whether there was actually music playing and how that looks when you're filming it.

ZE: Contrary to most movies I've ever done, yes.

MJ: There was music playing in all the party scenes, yeah. We knew that there wasn't going to be dialogue during those scenes, so we played it, and we played it loud, and we just let it roll and roll and roll.

ER: At the end, with the credits, when you see us all dancing, that's real.

ZE: The cameras never stopped.

MJ: Some of my favorite bits of footage is from before we even started shooting, when I rented a house in the valley for the weekend and I invited the guys there to do some male bonding. Just for them to meet each other and establish their friendship. I shot a lot of it, and that's in a lot of the opening credits, and it's at the end, too. They were freestyling at the house and just hanging around. It was all very natural and real.

PS: One of my favorite details of the movie was the multiple "Drunk in Love" requests. So spot-on. What are the go-to songs you request that you'll always dance to?

ER: (Singing) "Get your booty on the floor tonight, make my day."

MJ: I always like "New Shoes." (Sings the beat) Yeah, that'll always get me.

ZE: Any Michael Jackson song.

MJ: Mary J. Blige, "Real Love."

PS: You've mentioned the Vegas scene in a couple interviews. How was that shot?

ZE: That was so fun.

ER: We, like, ran around Vegas together. Literally with maps and a cameraman. That was it. It was so guerrilla. My legs hurt for three days afterward because we ran so much.

ZE: I don't know who was guiding us on this journey, but we were basically just running around Vegas with Max leading the way, doing whatever we wanted to do. We didn't know where the cameras were, we didn't know what was going on. We ended up on rides, and suddenly there's a Ferris wheel. We had music going the whole time, and it just felt experimental and fresh. It was fun.

ER: In the room, we really had a dance party. Everyone else went into a separate room and we listened to Chuck Berry's song from Pulp Fiction and just grooved. And then once we got it, everyone came in and we just all danced together in the room. It was a really nice moment.

ZE: Yeah, it was really cool.

PS: Speaking of music, Zac, it's been a thread that's weaved through your career, from High School Musical to Hairspray to this. Was it fun to get back into a performing role, even if it was a different kind?

ZE: Yeah, music and cinema always go hand in hand. Music can be the pulse of a film. It just so happens that in our film it's electronic music and it really drives the characters and the story. I love it for that reason. I love playing musicians.

PS: Emily, what's next for you? Are there any upcoming projects you're excited about?

ER: Yeah, I'm starting filming on this movie in October in New York. I'm not supposed to talk about it. I'm hoping to announce in the next couple weeks, but I'm really, really excited about it.

ZE: I'm excited. I can't wait!