If Cole Sprouse Likes Your Movie, He’s Probably Going to Email You About It

There are performers who have spent most of their lives in front of the camera, and then there are performers like Cole Sprouse, who have been working as actors since they were eight months old.

Alongside his twin brother Dylan, Sprouse’s early Hollywood trajectory followed some familiar beats for young stars: shared roles in movies like “Big Daddy,” a massively popular Disney Channel series in “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody,” and even their own merchandising brand (which sold everything from clothes to comic books). The Sprouses were hugely successful child actors, majorly bankable Disney brand names, and even the world’s richest young teens.

When the twins hit their teens, acting took a backseat to other endeavors, including attending New York University (Cole majored in Geographic Information Systems in archaeology, while Dylan majored in video game design). And while a return to acting wasn’t always in the cards after college, Sprouse recently told IndieWire he was willing to try out for one more pilot season. The gig he booked? Jughead Jones on “Riverdale,” the kind of work that, as he tells it, reignited a love for acting he didn’t realize had gone out.

These days, Sprouse is focused on building up an enviable slate of feature films, many of them in the indie space. He was just at Tribeca with David Drake’s Margo Martindale-starring “The Long Haul.” Earlier this month, he wrapped Roxy Sorkin’s “The Hot Year.” And the rest of his upcoming schedule includes (deep breath) Andrew Patterson’s “The Rivals of Amziah King,” Milad Schwartz Avaz’s “Elastic Hearts,” Oran Zegman’s “Goodbye Girl,” Devon Michaels’ “Wake,” and Eugene Kotlyarenko’s super-secret “Vintage Violence.”

That packed slate is no accident because, as Sprouse told us during a recent interview, he’s maybe just a little obsessed with tracking down his next gig. In short, if Cole Sprouse likes your work, he’s probably going to be emailing you about it. Mostly, the actor is eager to form lasting creative partnerships, and he’s more than happy to go looking for them. It seems to be working.

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

IndieWire: You’re very busy with work, and you’re becoming an uncle soon.

Cole Sprouse: I’m becoming an uncle soon, which is great. We’re all very, very excited. [Dylan and his wife Barbara Palvin] are going through renovations at their house, so all of us are going to be under my roof for a period of time, which will be very cute. I’ll be sleeping on the couch for a while.

‘The Suite Life of Zack & Cody’©Disney Channel/Courtesy Everett Collection

You have been working nearly your entire life, and as an outsider, it’s easy to look at your body of work and determine what stages you were in at various points, but I’d love to know how you felt during those seemingly big moments of evolution.

Please!

To go way back, when you and your brother stopped doing projects like “Suite Life,” do you remember what you were thinking you wanted to do? Was there some plan? You went to college. Was that the plan?

To be honest, it wasn’t a super-conscious thing. I didn’t really intend on returning to acting. I was applying to grad school, post-undergrad, and I was an archeological student, and I was also doing photography. My manager at the time asked me to just try out for a pilot season, and I said, “OK, but if I don’t book anything, I’m not going to do this anymore.” And I booked “Riverdale.” So, I followed that through.

In terms of my brother and I working together, I just think when we were very, very young, we were able to swap out, which wasn’t necessarily an artistic direction. It was more of an economic or a labor loophole. As we got older, we stopped looking super identical, so we started doing side-by-side [roles].

And then we went to college. People were entertaining the idea of us doing the twin thing again, but it just kind of feels tacky as you get older to be finishing each other’s sentences and doing that on screen. It just stopped working, and we weren’t really getting any interesting parts for twins. There aren’t too many. I’d say the most interesting parts for twins are usually just some prestigious actor playing both twins.

It’s Robert De Niro in both roles. Tom Hardy in both roles.

Exactly right. So it wasn’t like we had this conscious attempt to not work together, it’s just the way it ended up. And then “Riverdale” was successful and cleared the path for that. I just kept on keeping on.

If “Riverdale” hadn’t come through, were you ready to leave acting behind?

Yeah. I mean, I think I hadn’t fallen back in love with performing, or at least I didn’t know that I had, until I got onto set on “Riverdale.” Kids that start out working when they’re super young, it’s really an economic pursuit, so it’s kind of a tricky way to start something that should start from passion. It starts with a sort of financial coat on, and I think it takes a long time to take the coat off.

Even now, my relationship to acting is a lot better than it was, but it’s taken me a long time to really fall in love with it. I’ve always loved performing. But the reality of acting as a discipline is that it’s juggling a ton of perception, a ton of visibility. The celebrity part of an actor’s life was definitely a very complicated thing to unpack when I was very young, very small, and into my teens and then into my early 20s. But I knew I loved performing.

It’s changed a lot post-social media. Back when I was younger — and “Big Daddy” is a good example of this — the job was performing. The job was what you did when you showed up to set, and you finished the movie, and you kind of wiped your hands clean, for the most part, once the movie wrapped. That was the chicken of the dish, and the little side salad was you would show up to the premiere and the red carpet, or you would do one or two little talk shows, or whatever it was.

Post-social media, the side salad has become the main part of the dish. I think the challenge for a lot of young actors now is figuring out how to juggle the kind of celebrity or visibility component alongside the performance, which I think most people find to be the most enjoyable part.

‘Riverdale’Katie Yu/The CW

The level of visibility and perception that comes with social media is just … it’s not natural. We’re not meant to be seen this way, this much. We’re not meant to see this much of other people.

I don’t think the human brain has evolved to feel perceived by an entire globe. But I also don’t know how tangible the social media visibility actually is. I’m not so sold on the idea that it equates to butts in seats. I think that’s what we’re trying to determine as an industry right now, and what we were really trying to determine five, 10 years ago, and what we’re still grappling with: what does actual interest look like for an entertainer? How much can that really be reflected by a social media presence?

Currently, you’re working this pretty sizable slate of mostly indie films. There are some bigger ones in there, but it’s mostly leaning toward the indie world. What’s appealing about that?

It’s always been appealing to me. In terms of original screenplays, that’s where the life is. That’s where the risk is. I think you’re constantly surrounded by departments and creatives that are hungry, and I think hunger is a really important part of the creative process when it comes to making film or television.

My ability to pursue more independent projects is undeniably the consequence of the financial stability that I was able to get post-“Riverdale,” and that took me quite a long time to get there. It is a privilege to be able to pursue independent film without financial consideration, and so I do think it’s important to acknowledge that. … My upbringing through this industry is so deeply connected to the financial metrics of my life as a working child that I think it needs to be acknowledged.

I think oftentimes the job is a balance of art and commerce, and thankfully I have had enough time in the television space to be able to become financially stable enough to be like, “Yes, this is what I want to do. This is the kind of work I want to do.” I was in a very commercial part of the entertainment industry for most of my life, basically until I was 30, and now I’m able to pursue really cool independent films back to back and take risks. And it’s been wonderful.

Working in indie films also gives you the opportunity to work with rising filmmakers, filmmakers with one, two, maybe even three films. You just wrapped projects with Roxy Sorkin, Milad Schwartz Avaz, Devon Michaels. What is exciting for you about getting on set with someone like that?

The risk is the exciting part. As an entertainer, I feel confident enough now in my ability to navigate those professional spaces, to feel comfortable whether things are chaotic or they’re not chaotic. My mission statement post-“Riverdale” has been not necessarily pursuing specific roles or specific narratives, but rather connecting myself to a group of young creatives that I will work with consistently and in many projects.

If we look at some of the most robust careers for actors over the last 50 years, it’s actors that have played this muse-like relationship to talented auteurs and directors. That’s really the goal, to find two or three directors that are up and coming and creatively locked in and really wonderful to work with.

Like a Leo and Marty thing.

Exactly right. There are plenty of examples, but you have to trust your taste and really do your homework and reach out early to people and watch everything they’re doing, and then jump in and connect yourself. I am emailing a lot of people. I’m watching almost everything, and I think it requires a certain level of time and attention and homework. If you don’t have the patience or the time for it, it can be very difficult.

My understanding of acting over time has really shifted. It’s not that I’ve realized necessarily the powerlessness of it, but I’ve sort of embraced how passive you are within the creative process as an actor, and the beauty of that. We can always have our own ideas for scenes and for scripts, but at the end of the day, you’re not the one with the editor’s sword. You’re not the one choosing the shots. You’re not the one choosing the performances within the takes. You have to really, really trust the other creative departments that are in charge of your image.

I came from episodic television. We had a different director almost every episode, and sometimes you knew that they were going to prioritize a take where the shot looked better than the performances. The only way you can really condition your career is by building a strong relationship to people that have your back. That’s kind of what I’ve been trying to do within the independent space.

Would you like to write and direct your own features at some point?

I still feel like I have quite a bit to learn. Even though I’ve grown up around incredibly talented departments and the people within those departments, I’m also a bit of a control freak. I’ve done a lot of photography work, and I’ve directed a couple commercial spots, but when it comes to a feature-length film or even a short, and then how much control I can manage to retain after production is finished, that’s the part of it that I really need … I still have quite a bit more time to try and learn about that. [Laughs]

‘Lisa Frankenstein’©Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection

How do you navigate being a self-professed control freak and then doing someone else’s project? As you said, it’s done, your hands are clean, you’re walking away. Those two things seem at odds.

I mean, they are. I think that’s the beauty of it… it kind of forces you to go, “Hey, your job is done.” I have a tendency to try, and hold on to something I feel really creatively attached to, and I think it’s probably the source of the difficulty I had with acting for a very long time.

When you’re young, when you’re a kid actor, and then as you get into your teens, the public and whatever studio or company that you’re working with is kind of controlling your identity publicly. I was a kid who really didn’t like that. It’s still a work in progress, but it took me 30 years to be able to go, “Hey, that’s the gig. Relax. That’s what it is. Give up control. Stand in the middle of the boat. You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.”

That feels very healthy.

I wish I could slap some sense into my 15-year-old self, but …

One of your recent films that seems to have some staying power is “Lisa Frankenstein.” That was a bigger budget project, but it was with a first-time filmmaker, and it was clearly very personal to both Zelda [Williams] and Diablo [Cody].

It was really personal to me, too, actually. I came on pretty early in the process. Zelda and I had been wanting to work together for a long time. We’d been friends for almost a decade at that point.

When I was a kid, I couldn’t really make sense of acting as a job, but my career goal when I was a kiddo was, “I want to be the guy in the Godzilla suit.” I didn’t understand what that meant at the time, but I knew I wanted to play a monster. That’s such a little boy thing to feel, but I’ve always been a huge geek for special effects and practical effects. This felt like kind of high-fiving my younger self. I was locked in the second I read the script, and I really wanted it. And then we brought Kathryn on board. I basically begged Kathryn to be a part of it because she’s so great.

The movie was really not successful in theaters. It was kind of a huge financial flop in theaters. Only when it hit streaming did it become this kind of thing that it is now. I’m so thankful that people found it and that they love it. It’s an interesting dynamic to have with the sort of creative baby you make on set because, by the time people find it, you’ve already grieved it. I think all of us want a movie that we put a lot of ourselves into to be successful out the gate and people go like, “Yes, this one—”

$100 million box office opening weekend!

Big fucking lights and whatever! But when it doesn’t, and then it finds its voice or its audience, you’ve kind of already lamented a little bit that it didn’t hit the way that you wanted it to. That was my first time with that, and I’m just so thankful that people found it. I’ll do conventions every once in a while, and there was a year where half the convention hall was just Lisa and The Creature. It was so special.

One of your other projects that’s coming out soon is “The Rivals of Amziah King,” which was a hit out of SXSW last year and seems to have a lot of buzz on it already.

I watched Andrew Patterson’s “The Vast of Night” out of Slamdance, and I reached out to him right away. I was just like, “Dude, I will do anything to just be a part of your movies.” Funny enough, the role that I played, which is a smaller part but an impactful part, there was an actor attached to it, and he couldn’t end up making it. And Patterson called me up and said, “Please, I need help.” I was on a plane the next day.

I think that there is a beautiful serendipity. I’m a big believer in the movie gods, which is that if something is supposed to happen, it kind of will, and that there’s a serendipity or a kind of clockwork that takes place that sort of eventually puts you in the right room at the right time, and you sort of have to be OK with whatever way it ends up.

You mention serendipity, but you’ve also talked a lot about when you see something you like, you’re reaching out to those filmmakers and creators. You’re laying the groundwork for the serendipity. You are taking that first step.

I’ve had enough experiences in the industry now to feel humbled, ego-wise. I’ve sent a lot of emails that have never got responses, but I’ve swung when the ball came across the plate, and sometimes you fucking smack the ball, and it really works out, but you got to not have an ego about it. I’m a fan. I’ll go up [to someone], and I’ll be like, “I’m a fan.” No ego. “I want to work with you.” No ego. Sending emails to silence. Watching everything that I can. That’s what I mean by the movie gods is, when it’s supposed to work, it works.

There’s definitely a way to stack the cards in your favor. You can’t really drag a horse to water and make it drink. I can’t force someone to see me as a part of their sort of creative baby, but I can at least let them know I exist.

What do you want to do that you haven’t done yet? Is there a genre that you’re interested in?

The greatest thing about “Riverdale” was that it was so kind of—

You’ve got to do everything.

You got to do everything! I really feel like I’ve kind of at least dipped a toe into almost everything, so I don’t really approach work that way anymore. If I read something, and I like it, and I feel emotionally connected to it, and there’s something about it that applies to my life, or I really like the director or the writer, I just follow that emotion.

If it’s a more technically challenging part, if there’s a lot of character work or physical work or accent work or singing, I will try and surround myself with the right professionals to help me do the best I can within that performance, but it’s really an emotional thing. If I connect to people, then I connect to people, and I just kind of follow that.

You have a very full slate coming up, but what’s the one project you’d really like to hype now?

I’m really excited for a movie I just worked on with Eugene Kotlyarenko. I’m really excited for that.

I couldn’t find much about that one.

I know. [Laughs]

It’s on purpose!

[Nods] And I won’t say too much about it, but Eugene’s awesome. I think he’s got an incredibly unique fingerprint. I got to work with Sean Price Williams, who I just love. It’s really special. It was a lot of fun. I’m really excited. I think people are really going to love it.

Everything else you’ve got going on, there’s lots of info. Cast. Log line. This one, nope. I had to go hunting.

It’s very hush-hush. I believe they’re actively doing final cut within the next couple days. So, we’ll start hearing some stuff about it, for sure.