Bella Thorne and Zendaya played the BFF duo with some killer dance moves Cece and Rocky on Shake It Up and of course, the girls forged a friendship off-screen too. Their bond is unbreakable, since they simply went through a pretty unique experience together, being the co-leads of a hit Disney Channel series. And even since the show wrapped, they’ve always been as supportive as ever, attending each other’s premieres, even guest-starring on each other’s respective new TV shows.

In a new interview, Bella just admitted something truly special about the girls’ friendship that will solidify why they will always be connected: Z was the first friend she ever made in the celeb universe of Hollywood.

“Zendaya and I met at the test for Shake It Up. We instantly hit it off and then we were really, really close since that. My first friend in Hollywood is Zendaya,” Bella said.

OK, now doesn’t that just warm your heart? Both starlets were so young, starting out their careers so it makes sense they really hit it off. But while Bella admits now they’ve always been close, there was a time when their friendship was as bit strained. Like any bestie pair, there are rough patches and Bella told J-14 the girls once found themselves in a rather awkward situation, since they felt like outside factors were forcing them to not be friends.

“Zendaya and I were put in a very unfortunate position where we were kind of forced to compete against each other [during Shake It Up], which made the whole first season of the show just very awkward for us,” Bella said to J-14. “We wanted to love each other, but yet we were constantly being put against each other. It was, ‘Who’s better at this?’ and ‘Who’s better at that?’ And then second season we kind of just had this tell-all talk where we started crying and really just put everything out there on the table, and that’s when we became best friends,” she explained.

It’s good to know they were able to overcome this roadblock and see the bigger picture that they really were meant to be actual friends. They clearly will always have each other’s backs now. Tears.

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