Dylan Sprouse was not afraid to put his foot down on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody set, according to former costar Kim Rhodes.
Rhodes, 54, said not only Dylan, 31, but Cole Sprouse as well, always “defended” her on the show’s set. One of Rhodes’ “favorite memories” from the Disney Channel show occurred during her pregnancy when Dylan refused to make a fat joke at the actress’ expense. (Rhodes welcomed a daughter with husband Travis Hodges in 2008.)
“He just kept skipping over it,” Rhodes recalled during an episode of the “Back to the Best” podcast earlier this month. “It was like in the middle of a chunk of dialogue, so he kept skipping this laugh line and skipping it and skipping it and skipping it.”
When they went to film the episode in front of a studio audience, an executive producer went head-to-head with Dylan, who was 15 at the time.
“It’s the director’s job to cut, by the way,” Rhodes noted, saying that the producer attempted to force Dylan to “say the line.” Dylan, however, refused.
“He goes, ‘I would not disrespect any woman that way, let alone this woman. You write something funny and I’ll say it.’ That’s my little man,” Rhodes said. “They’re both my little men.”
Dylan and Cole starred as Zack and Cody Martin, respectively, in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody from 2005 to 2008 while Rhodes played their onscreen mom, Carey Martin, for the duration of the series. While the twins went on to reprise their roles for the spinoff series, The Suite Life on Deck, Rhodes did not. The actress did, however, appear in four episodes of the spinoff as a special guest star.
Dylan and Cole finished out their time as Disney stars in 2011 when they no longer saw eye-to-eye with the network, so The Suite Life on Deck came to an end.
“We had a really awesome idea for where the show needed to go. We were 18. If that isn’t old enough to know exactly what the show needs, then … well, I would beg to disagree,” Dylan told Vulture in December 2017. “I don’t think [Disney] were willing to work with us, really ever. So, we stopped the show.”
As reboot culture is all the rage in Hollywood, fans have hoped for Dylan and Cole to bring back the Suite Life franchise. However, it’s a big no for the twins.
“I don’t think that it should be done,” Cole declared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in May 2020. “I think it’s really incendiary, there’s a huge potential to, kind of, demolish that perfect little golden memory of a program is you go back and revive it.”
