Joshua Bassett was 'near death' when Olivia Rodrigo's Driver's License dropped

Joshua Bassett, The High School Musical star, was hours away from death at the start of this year when he was hospitalised with septic shock and heart failure.

The 20-year-old actor hit headlines in January when his TV co-star Olivia Rodrigo dropped her debut single, Drivers License - many believed to be about her rumoured romance and split from Bassett, who it was claimed moved on to date fellow singer/actress Sabrina Carpenter.

However, Basset shared his words on the situation , saying that he wasn't paying attention to the gossip and the controversy at the time, because he was going through a health crisis which ended up with his hospitalisation.

The star shared his ordeal with GQ magazine: "I started getting very ill, and it kept getting worse. I thought it was, like, food poisoning or whatever. It got worse, it got worse."

He was admitted to a hospital with "unimaginable pain" on the same day he released his own song, Lie Lie Lie, which fans thought was his response to Rodrigo's Drivers License.

He continued: "(The doctors) told me that I had a 30 per cent chance of survival," Bassett revealed. "They told me that if I had not checked into the hospital within 12 hours, I would have been found (dead) in my apartment."

Bassett, as a result of his health hell, shunned the social media love triangle gossip online, saying: 'I didn't have any energy to be able to focus on anything but staying alive.'