Dylan Sprouse reveals the dispiriting amount he earns from The Suite Life of Zack and Cody residual checks

Dylan Sprouse of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody fame is opening up about the pitiful amount of money he earns on residual checks from the Disney Channel series.

During a reunion with his former Suite Life costar Phill Lewis on Tuesday's episode of his Wildmen podcast, the 34-year-old former child star admitted he has received only a single paycheck for residuals on the series, which aired from 2005 to 2008.

Even more disappointing was the fact that the check was for only one episode – a 2006 crossover in which Dylan and his twin brother Cole Sprouse joined forces with fellow Disney Channel hit Hannah Montana, which starred Miley Cyrus.

The actor, who played Zack on The Suite Life, revealed to Lewis, who played hotel manager Marion Moseby, that the meager check wasn't even enough to buy him a cup of coffee. 

In fact, the check may have cost more to print than it was worth, as Sprouse – who revealed incest's impact on his family last month – only received an insulting five cents from the Suite Life-Hannah Montana crossover. 

'In a time where residuals would have been great, not a single paycheck for being arguably one of the most popular shows,' Sprouse said bitterly. 

To illustrate just how popular The Suite Life, which also starred Brenda Song and Ashley Tisdale, once was, Sprouse said the show went toe-to-toe with one of the most acclaimed shows of all time.

He looked back on a time when The Suite Life showrunner Danny Kallis walked onto the soundstage with a newspaper and announced that the series was beating The Sopranos in the ratings.

'That pops in my head every once in a while when I go, "And we still didn’t get a single f***ing residual,"' Sprouse seethed.

However, the Disney Channel would have been available to more viewers at the time, whereas the more premium HBO would have been part of fewer viewer subscription packages. 

While it's not unusual for performers on streaming shows to earn paltry residuals because of deals that are more favorable to streaming platforms over traditional television studios, Sprouse's contract appeared to be unusually stingy for a show from the pre-streaming era.

Sprouse added that the Disney Channel 'prided itself on being a channel where you could turn it on safely for kids, where there’s no advertisements, there’s no anything to cross over, and all you’re going to watch are shows at that age demographic.'

Lewis added that The Suite Life was broadcast in 'over 90 countries around the world' and was 'on four or five times a night because kids would just rewatch this.'

'They put two episodes on on a Tuesday, and they would run them just throughout the whole day,' he said.

Like many shows aimed at children on networks like The Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, Lewis claimed that The Suite Life stars signed 'a bizarre contract' that allowed the network to film as many episodes as it wanted in a year while considering all of them just one season, even if the total number of episodes was well over a traditional season's worth.

'They called it one season because they didn’t have to pay us bump,' Lewis claimed, meaning that the strategy allowed the network to avoid increasing actors' pay after they had filmed the equivalent of a standard season. 'So we had that, which was very strange.'

Sprouse also claimed that the 'higher-ups' at the Disney Channel treated The Suite Life as if it was the 'ugly duckling' of the channel's lineup and starved the show of resources.

He noted that the show was 'extremely popular,' yet was 'extremely underfunded' by the network. 

'So I don’t quite understand that,' the actor mused.

Sprouse's revelation about his paltry Suite Life residual payments comes after he made an even more shocking confession on Wildmen: that he and his twin brother Cole are 'children of incest.'

Both Dylan and his brother Cole rose to fame on the Disney Channel show The Suite Life of Zack & Cody before later diverting to their own separate projects over the years. 

In a wild episode of Wildmen from last month, the actor, who recently cheered on wife Barbara Palvin at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, discussed looking into his family tree through the genealogy program Ancestry, where he would eventually discover 'something weird.' 

'When I first took it, my actual breakdown of history was very different than it is now,' he explained. 'I've found a lot of family members, weirdly, who I never met, because my dad's side of the family is pretty fractured.'

Sprouse added that he 'started to talk to them, compare and contrast.' 

He then shared how both sides of his family had ventured to California amid the Gold Rush, with one set of relatives coming across gold. 

Eventually, both sides were joined by marriage in the 1800s upon residing in the same area.

'And then, they diverged, and then they married again [through] my mom and my dad, like, last generation.' 

However, Sprouse further found out that his uncles on his father's side were identical twins as well. 

The star recalled reaching out to his brother Cole as he said on the podcast: 'I called Cole, I showed him a picture, I was like, "Dude, I just found out some f***ing crazy s***."' 

Sprouse explained: 'I'd only ever thought that identical twins or twins in general came from my mom's side of the family. 

'We had seven sets of twins in four generations,' he continued before adding, 'Because it's the same family.'

Sprouse expressed that his parents 'had no idea,' but 'a lot of stuff started to make sense.' 

'Because one of my aunts was a twin, but she was one of the twins who ate her twin in the womb, and when they cut open a cyst in her shoulder, it had teeth and hair.'

Sprouse then claimed: 'Long story short, Cole and I are children of incest,' while also joking that he doesn't 'have webbed toes.'

The Daily Mail has reached out to reps of Sprouse for comment but has yet to hear back. 

The twin stars are children of Melanie Wright and Matthew Sprouse, and the pair have made rare comments about their parents in the past. 

Back in 2023, Cole revealed that both he and his sibling were forced into becoming child actors to help provide financial stability during an appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast. 

Aside from being a recent guest on the Wildmen podcast, Sprouse has been keeping busy while celebrating fatherhood. 

Both he and wife Barbara Palvin welcomed their daughter Sylvie in September, after tying the knot in 2023. 

The couple announced that their first child was welcomed to the world by sharing an adorable post to Instagram at the time. 

Sprouse and Palvin could be seen standing next to each other inside a living room while wearing Dodgers jerseys. 

The actor held the newborn, who also was dressed to support the L.A. team, in his arms as a baseball game played in the background. 

The caption of the post read: 'We took Labor Day literally this year.'