“Suite Life ”star Dylan Sprouse reveals why he refused to tell a scripted 'fat joke' about costar Kim Rhodes
"You’d be amazed at what having your own show at 11 will do for your confidence," the actor said of talking back to an executive producer.
If you won’t stand up for your TV mom, then who will?
Suite Life of Zack & Cody star Dylan Sprouse wasn’t willing to mess around and find out, as his former costar Kim Rhodes revealed in a recent interview. Now, Sprouse himself is fessing up to the thought process behind his decision, as one of the show’s young stars, to refuse to say a scripted fat joke about Rhodes when she was pregnant.
“[I] just don’t really think fat jokes are funny,” Sprouse said during a Thursday visit to SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live. “There’s a better joke somewhere else, unless you’re talking about yourself."
He continued, "Unless it’s self-referential, which I find is fun. But if you’re pointing the finger at people and talking about how they look, I just don’t tend to find that very funny in general. I think there’s better jokes.”
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By Dyan’s estimation, he was about 14 or 15 when the incident occurred.
When host Andy Cohen asked how the young actor found the courage to push back against an executive producer, Sprouse laughed: “I mean, you’d be amazed at what having your own show at 11 will do for your confidence.”
Cohen joked, “You were a benevolent king,” and Dylan agreed with a laugh, “Yeah, I was a benevolent king. Yeah, exactly.”
He added, “No, no, because I was a huskier young lad who again, really didn’t come into himself until he was like 18. My dad also kept us very, very grounded."
Rhodes, who played spunky mom of two Carey Martin during the show’s run, praised her young costar and his twin brother, Cole Sprouse, during a November interview with the Back to the Best podcast. Rhodes said the duo "defended [her] all the way through" the show and dubbed the incident in question one of her “favorite memories” from the production.
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"Dylan had a line that was a fat joke, and he just kept skipping over it,” she explained. “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 finally arrived at taping the scene before a studio audience, an executive producer called “Cut!” and told him to “say the line.”
Said Rhodes: "And he goes, 'I would not disrespect any woman that way, let alone this woman. You write something funny and I'll say it.’”
After fondly referring to Dylan and Cole as "my little men,” Rhodes also credited their costar Phil Lewis (aka Mr. Moseby) with making the brothers aware of the sway they held during the Disney Channel show’s run.
“Phill was like: ‘Look, you’re the only people on this set that are not expendable, so you take the bullet every time,’ and they took that so seriously,” Rhodes said.
The Suite Life of Zack & Cody aired on Disney Channel for three seasons from March 2005 to September 2008, and spawned a sequel series and a 2011 TV movie. The brothers ultimately departed the network due to creative control issues.
You can hear Dylan recall the 'fat joke' incident above.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.
