You’d think starring in one of Disney Channel’s biggest hits would mean at least a few nice residual checks years later, right? Well, Dylan Sprouse says his mailbox has been pretty much EMPTY!
According to People on Sunday, the 34-year-old actor made the jaw-dropping revelation earlier this week while catching up with former The Suite Life of Zack & Cody costar Phill Lewis on Lewis’ Wildmen podcast. And the amount Dylan says he earned from reruns?!?!? Well, uh, prepare yourselves, Perezcious readers…
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Dylan explained:
“Correct me if I’m wrong about this, because this is what I wanted to talk to you about because this surprises people that I’ve told in person. I don’t ever think I’ve said this like out on an interview, but the only residual check I’ve ever received for The Suite Life at all was a crossover episode with Hannah Montana for 5 cents. I’m not joking.”
FIVE CENTS?!
For a show that made him and twin brother Cole Sprouse household names?! And Dylan says that was his ONLY residual check despite appearing in nearly 190 episodes?!?!
As he dryly put it:
“Residuals would have been great.”
The actor recalled just how HUGE the sitcom was back then:
“Not a single paycheck for being arguably one of the most popular shows on TV. I remember Danny Kallis, who was our showrunner, running downstairs to the set once with a newspaper that says ‘Suite Life is beating The Sopranos in ratings.’”
Of course, little Dylan had a more pressing concern, as he joked about his reaction at the time:
“My first question was ‘What’s The Sopranos?’”
Ha! But the memory isn’t quite so funny to him now:
“[That moment] pops in my head every once in a while when I go, ‘And we still didn’t get a single f**king residual.’”
Dylan explained this was before streaming, when Disney Channel’s reach was MASSIVE despite viewers having fewer channels to choose from:
“Disney Channel itself prided itself on being a channel where you could turn it on safely for kids, where there’s no advertisements, there’s nothing to cross over, and all you’re going to watch are shows aimed at that age demographic. So mass appeal across the United States and the rest of the world. I think most of the Disney Channel shows were translated into like 80 different languages.”
Phill, 58, said the show aired in more than 90 countries — and reruns were practically nonstop!
Lewis said:
“We’re talking about the residuals. We were on four or five times a night because kids would just rewatch this. They put two episodes on a Tuesday, and they would run them just throughout the whole day, and then they would leapfrog and they would jump and then we did wraparound episodes.”
And those “wraparound episodes” came with another alleged financial sting!
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Phill said the cast filmed extra scenes over multiple weeks, which were eventually stitched into whole new installments:
“A wraparound episode was we’d shoot our episode for the week and then they would say, ‘Okay, we’re going to shoot this scene from an episode that you’re going to shoot in two weeks,’ and we’re like, ‘Okay.’ So we shoot that scene. Then the next week they go, ‘You’re gonna shoot this scene from the same episode.’ And what they were doing was they were compiling an episode by shooting a scene a week.”
Lewis also then claimed the cast “weren’t paid for that episode.” Which, um, jeez!
Millions of viewers, endless reruns, and Dylan says he has but a NICKEL to show for it in residuals?! That’s one seriously NOT-so-sweet suite life! LOLz!
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