Call Her Daddy - Cole Sprouse: Exploited for Money and Fame

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

Cole Sprouse joins Call Her Daddy this week for a sit-down interview, something he’s been reluctant to do in the past. Now, the former child star is ready to share like he never has before. He reveals the true reason he and his twin brother, Dylan, were thrust into acting at a young age and opens up about his complicated family dynamic. Cole doesn't hold back when talking about his dating life. He talks about losing his virginity, being cheated on, his relationship with a Riverdale castmate and even shares details about his current relationship.

what is up daddy gang it is your founding father alex cooper with call her daddy cole sprouse yes welcome to call her daddy thank you for having me considering how private you are i'm so happy that you're here because i'm excited for people to get to know you a little bit better maybe even have you talk about some things that you're here because I'm excited for people to get to know you a little bit better. Maybe even have you talk about some things that you've never talked about before. Sure. Let's go. Okay. Let's get into it. No, I will say I really like how conversational your podcast is.

Thank you. And I think that that's missing a lot from the publicity space, that there's like this curation that I believe does a tremendous disservice to actual guests on something and and the conversational nature of just the podcast space in general but particularly yours is really refreshing my publicists are obviously not here cole showed up alone they they rarely they know that they have very very little control over the lunacy that whatever happens on set. So they're like, okay, dude, he's just going to be this whirling dervish. We might as well just let him go. I will say I love it because I've had people show up here with 20 people.

And then I've had people like you that show up alone. This is what I prefer. I show up to a lot of things alone. Were you like nervous showing up here at all? I was nervous because my girlfriend was like, hey, she's going to pepper you with some really interesting questions. But that's kind of it. Shout out to Cole's girlfriend.

We love you for giving him a little bit of a taste of what he's about to get on Call Her Daddy. OK, so let's get into it. Let's go back to kind of the beginning. You and your twin brother, Dylan, were born in Italy. Yes. Why were your parents in Italy? And when did you move to

the United States my parents were teaching out there at the time they were part of this school slash cult I can't really figure out what it was but my father was teaching physical education and my mother was an art teacher and we were living in Tuscany and we were just born out there because it was romantic and sexy and and then I mean, we moved when we were very young, we ended up moving to Switzerland and then my parents got a divorce and my mother moved us back to the U S to like studio city, uh, between studio city and long beach. And that's when we started acting, acting. Okay. Twins are a lot. Have your parents ever talked to you about how hard it was in the beginning? Like, were they ready to be parents and ready for a new born?

No, no, no. My father got a vasectomy immediately after he found out he was having twins. Okay. Yeah. And they shared that with you? Oh, yeah. My father and I have a very good relationship. He's very open about all that stuff.

So you and Dylan booked your first acting gigs before you were even one year old. Yeah. With diaper commercials. What did your parents explain to you as to like why you were auditioning so young? Well, my mother needed an income. I mean, there's two, I think there's two types of kids within, you know, the child acting business. There's like the thespian children that choose to do it. And then there's the working class kids that, in our case at least, twins are a great labor exploit because babies can only work for a certain amount of hours.

So you double the time if you have two of them that look identical. So it was, I mean, it started really as a means to put bread on the table and also allow my mother at the same time to be a mother, but to make her main focus and her job our careers. I mean, it made me think kind of like Mary-Kate and Ashley. It's a great example. Yeah. Because like, obviously, I remember on Full House, it was like, you can just swap in each kid when it's like, oh, you're up on, what is it, like five hours you can work or something? Even less I mean every year it gets a little uh a little bit more but in most cases a baby can only work like an hour or two hours when you think about that like you as a kid being like I wasn't conscious until this last year so please go ahead Cole's like I don't even know where I remember

fucking breakfast so no it is crazy because i i do i was like thinking about that of like the child labor laws of how you have a better way to i too often think of child labor laws yes and how do you feel about that cole i mean to be honest i i get a lot of people uh asking me like oh man you really went through the gamut oh man all this but in very many ways, it was like, you know, the golden ticket from Willy Wonka. It was a really, it was a great means to an end. do you mind if i have a cigarette please have your cigarette you know what gold let's open the door i don't know people get people are all cool about it's fine everyone's smoking weed in

like a studio but not a fucking cigarette tobacco and everyone gets like this it's fine it's fucking fine i'm curious did you even go to like elementary school i did um it was off and on we it was in between jobs mainly but most of my younger curriculum was homeschooled which is great because to be honest i did not feel like i missed out on much everyone that talks to me about their high school experience i was like this sounds fucking horrible it wasn't great it wasn't great cole but i'm wondering do you remember when you were in elementary school like how did people treat you because i know you weren't famous famous but like big daddy you were what five yeah six and when we were kids i don't think they really cared too much some of them knew

that we were actors but dylan and i uh dylan specifically was a huge bully so our navigation through elementary school and middle school we were like fucking dicks wait how would he bully people uh he would beat him up he would beat him up and then i became known as the twin that would come up and be like, I'm so sorry for my brother. Wait, I kind of feel like that was your character also on Zack and Cody. Well, I think the writers on Zack and Cody took a lot of cues from our actual personalities. But yeah, he was a real bully. Your brother would be like, what the fuck? Thanks, Cole.

Oh, no, I say this all everyone knows that he's fine with it i don't know if he's fine with it i think he's still got some stuff to work out yeah yeah totally so how are the two of you different in personality like if people don't you know you they just know your on-screen personalities what is the difference personality wise my brother's a lot more stubborn um i would say pig-headed as his brother but uh he is very much a natural leader like he he a lot of people respect his opinion because he goes into his opinions incredibly boldly where i i will sort of tiptoe and and sense the room and um yeah it's it's interesting we're we're very very different and i think most twins get uh more distinct as time goes on but uh we're still best friends i mean he lives like 10 minutes

from me so do you guys talk every day every day yeah every day it's very cute very cute i mean when i moved to vancouver for riverdale it was probably was probably the biggest amount of distance we've ever had between each other and we felt it man it was sad I it was genuine it genuinely made me upset so back to what you were saying about your parents split when you were how old oh I mean i think before a year yeah okay i only have one memory of them still together for sure what is that memory oh it was me riding on the back of my mother's bike um in the little baby seat uh in switzerland and there we were down this little bike path because you know europeans love that and uh there were aspen trees and owls and things it was very picturesque i actually can't tell if i've completely fabricated this

memory now but i i i'd like to think there was this idyllic origin yeah were they on the same page about your careers though because okay no my mother um my mother definitely fast was fascinated by the industry far more than my father was. My father's a very blue-collar dude, grew up super, super rough. He's an automotive repairman. So he had a very blue-collar approach to understanding our business. I'm very thankful for my father's just philosophy of life because it allowed me to take none of this too seriously which is great but uh yeah i don't i would say he did not really understand he saw the money and was like hey this is quite lucrative and i come from a family of 49ers so it was like this is a gold rush man you

gotta you gotta strike this vein while it's hot but uh i think he understands that more than anything when you say that your parents obviously were on different pages at what age do you did you recognize that and like what were those conversations well i was my both my brother and i were given we went through a lengthy court battle at about 10 and custody was stripped from my mother and given to my father and at that point i said my mother thinks of this a little differently to my father. And at that point, I said, my mother thinks of this a little differently than my father does. Yes. And it's interesting, because in very many ways, the court system, especially in cases of divorce, and in cases of custody,

is in very, very large favor of the mother. And in this instance, it probably should have been the father. And I think his philosophy of that approach towards our careers and grounded, like he desperately wanted us to be normal kids. And my mother wanted us to be more than or sort of a bit more of a caricature of two, you know, normal kids. Some extraordinary thing, which is beautiful in its own right. But I think it does a disservice to children who are also working to be treated as anything more or less than like their peers. Yeah. I mean, obviously that is telling. Like usually the mother would be getting custody. Were there more things like behind the scenes

other than just like the forward facing, like we disagree with your careers? Oh, absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. I mean, I think, I've said this once in an interview and it was totally misconstrued, but I believe that celebrity and success

and financial excess or surplus in a single generation is an elected trauma in very many ways. Um, I, I have watched a lot of people come into success from much less in a single generation and they all have a very codified, um, kind of sickness afterwards. And it's one of this industry in general, I believe, cultivates an incredible amount of vanity and narcissism that can destroy people. And it doesn't matter your age. I've seen it when I was younger, and I've seen it now as an adult. But like, that kind of narcissism, that self-centeredness can end up really undoing people and um so there was plenty plenty behind the scenes i think in very many ways my brother and i were lucky mainly because we were we were young boys like the fascination when we were younger at

least on the disney channel was like of miley and selena and a lot of these girls because they were you know they were heavily sexualized which is another huge fucking issue. But the fascination, which was young womanhood. My brother and I, in very many ways, went through all of the same trappings, except the lens wasn't on us as tightly, which I'm very, very grateful for. And I think was, you know, I, I think at the time was just coincidence. Um, and as I've grown older, I'm, I'm, I feel very blessed to not have had that sort of shown, but, um, yeah, we went, we went through a lot and I think it also has contributed to my conflict with this industry as I've grown up like like the philosophy of continuing it within acting has has been definitely shaped by how I've watched people torn asunder by it I remember when you said earlier like I started this as a job to put food on the table for my

family then there's other people that are like I want want to be an actress. I want to be an actor. Like you didn't really have a choice. Are you in any way resentful of your parents that they put you in that position so young? No, no, I'm not. My parents did not come from too much. And I have now been granted a life of primarily financial stability and surplus in very many cases.

That is the byproduct of working for 30 years and sort of trading my childhood. But I don't regret it at all. I don't regret it at all. I know that there's definitely resentment. There's definitely some things I have to work through. But no, if I were given the same choice again I'd probably do it again the world I feel like can be pretty rough to child actors sure and it's not fair but I do feel like we hear more sad stories than happy Sure. Were your parents ever checking in to make sure that you guys didn't go down a dark and dangerous path?

Absolutely. I mean, my father primarily. OK. My father's like my best friend. Yeah. He's a really, really solid dude. And he had he had such a rough upbringing that I think he was able to recognize empathetically when, when my brother or I were going through something. Like, can you give us an example? Like, take us back to like, you're in Zack and Cody, right? And you're going through it. You're working at Disney Channel. What is your dad saying to you guys in those moments? You know, funny enough, I get asked about Disney a lot because I think a lot of people want to sort of poke the bear and see, you know, how, how atrocious the channel was. By the time my brother and I got to Disney Channel, we were good. It was a huge boon to us. It was, it was in very many ways, a life-saving show.

It provided us with an amount of stability and consistency and routine that really was needed for my brother and I at the time. Everyone has had a different experience there. I've had former Disney stars on and every single person's recount of what happened to them or what they felt from it is very different. Yeah, that's interesting to me too. Why? Because a lot of those kids came from privilege. You know, I find that a lot of the times it's much easier to complain about the business approach of a larger studio when you don't need the money as much. You know, it's really intriguing like like when you when you approach this career as a sort of passion and you're starting to learn the language of these major

studios and the language is always money um you start to become discontented but if you start from a working kid background and you're like yeah this is this is money baby right um you're not as surprised or discontented when your boss or the studio chooses a money-based approach to your career and i'm not delegitimizing anything they say i i it is no doubt it is already incredibly conflicting to be a child hoisted up to the criticism of an entire nation and also be working nine to five but i but i think you know i i think it's important if you're learning about someone's own history to know the historian and and their background this neo baby argument, as an example,

has been, in my opinion, something my brother and I have been talking about since we were kids, but it's now just recently become a hot topic in the public. And, you know, this is a major distinction. This kind of, this nepotism or elitism has existed within the industry for a very long time and i find it's a lot easier to complain um about the philosophy of a boss like i mentioned earlier when you when you come from a position of privilege where maybe you don't

need the surplus as much as another another child. You mentioned that when you got the Suite Life of Zach and Cody, it was a lifeline. Because I was asking you, like, how would your dad keep you guys from going down that bad path? So prior to Suite Life, where were you two at mentally? Oh, man, I don't think I've ever talked about this. Because in very many ways, I was lucky for it not to be discussed. But when we were given, when my father was given forced custody, we had pretty much lost everything from

the youngest parts of our career. That would be friends and Big Daddy and a lot of that. My mother was an incredibly wonderful and artistic woman, but she was financially the most irresponsible person ever. So we really didn't have much. We moved in with our father, who was a very blue-collar dude, and we lived underneath this wonderful Russian couple named Helen and Vadim in like the back of their house, and little baby Nikolai, shout out little baby Nikolai, you're probably quite old now, the prospect of the consistency of just the money alone was life-changing for not only my brother and I at the time, but also my father, so my

father was in big support of this ball that was already rolling down the hill. You know what I mean? And he was guiding us with a very gentle but firm hand towards a sort of moral compass that I think was needed for who I am today. My brother and I, you know, in very many ways we tried to stay out of trouble. We were a couple dorks that were way we're far more interested in playing video games and Warhammer and and our sort of board game stuff with our friends than going out and partying and stuff and we also you know

we were 13 but looked 8 I was 16 and I looked. I had a bowl cut and you know I looked like a little Dutch girl. It was incredible and and I think that kept us out of a lot of trouble. It was phenomenal let me just say. Yeah I'm gonna bring it back don't worry. Now that you have the hindsight of that pretty pivotal moment for you with your family how does it make you feel now about what just your mom losing all the money that you worked for and then having to i don't blame her she's human okay i think in very many ways we are all more or less durable to the trappings of success. And everyone has their own personal navigation through that stuff.

And I think she was, I think if anyone knew the kind of woman she was, they could have said it would have gone the exact same way. I am remorseful in very many ways that she wasn't able to get out of it, but I don't blame her at all because she's a human, and even more than that, she was an artist. So I think it's very funny because artists now, I mean, now we're holding them to a very high standard just publicly, but most of us only join the arts because we're pretty fucked up.

This place is like a vortex, man. Yeah, it is. You get into this stuff because you're probably a pretty arcane person just to begin with. And I think I don't blame her in the slightest. Yeah. You know? How did booking The Suite Life of Zack and Cody change your life? I mean, money. Straight up.

I'd love to say it was a more complicated thing, but the financial stability, I mean, my father and I, my father, Dylan, and I, we moved to our own house a year afterwards. And that gave us the kind of freedom and the base the foundation in order to feel more at home and to lock in our private sphere of existence and and to continue from there but uh yeah i'm not gonna lie the money was fucking great can you take us through like what was a day like on set? Yeah, it's awesome. It was great.

I mean, I remember complaining around the water cooler as a child, but I look back now as it's like the easiest gig ever. So Monday was a table read day, which meant the whole cast and the producers and the writers and some of the crew would sit around a large table and we would read the script for the first time we do a very light rehearsal Tuesday uh would be our crew run through so we would do the whole thing on the stage from front to back um in front of the crew and the writers and then they would take their notes Wednesday was a producer run through so we'd have the execs from Disney come down and they would

watch the episode live like as we were performing it on stage um and then Thursday we would shoot half the episode and Friday we would shoot the other half in front of a live audience did you guys have fun oh we had a great time we had great I can imagine like how close you obviously are with your brother like like the two of you. And because you said your characters kind of were able to morph a little bit to your personality. You did have Barry to sing. And vice versa. Yeah.

We adopted quite a bit of that, of who they were as well as we aged. Who was your friend group at Disney? And do you still talk to anyone? Ooh, I was a fucking asshole on Disney, man. I was a really angry kid. Okay. I was a super angry kid. And I think in the most cliche way, like angsty teen, angsty kid possible.

I was atheist at the time and I was doing all my, my Dawkins and, and Hitchens and, and all the kids were Christians. So I was, I was like really getting off to like the debates and that's a fucking annoying kid. That's a really annoying kid. Just like, I'm sure you guys knew one of those dickheads back in the day that was me you're like poking the bear I was poking the bear so you weren't wearing one of the purity rings absolutely not absolutely in fact I was so vocally opposed to that stuff that everyone I mean people the kids thought I was quite radioactive as I recall I mean I mean, I was not the most popular fellow. Did Dylan make friends?

Oh, yeah. And all the girls loved him, too. I was so upset. Is he still friends with Disney people? I don't think too much of us keep up anymore, but I think that's you know that's the nature of of all of us growing but you know I saw I saw Miley as an example at I think Jimmy Fallon a little while ago and it was a really nice little reunion um it's like you know

it's like high school friends that you graduate with and you see them every once in a while you're like oh we used to be so close or something like that I don't think it's more complex than that though i love that dylan started as the bully in elementary school everyone loves the bully contrary to popular belief yeah girls love the bully at least in in high school i guess if he's like a harmless bully i don't know dylan was i don't know i was an intellectual bully which was fucking lame yeah but those are kind of the worst those it was the worst i'm saying to you that i was a total piece of shit when you look back at that version i cringe i cringe hard because imagine it's one thing if like the guy looks cool no i had a bowl

cut you know that's horrible i remember watching the show and being so like obsessed with you guys and then when i got a tiny bit older i was like they need to cut their fucking hair yeah you were you were fucking right i wish you would just sat us down to been like dude get off this thing my brother had the same swoop bowl cut that was all that was all the rage back then when were you finally done paying the bills for your family? Oh, man. Three years ago. Three years ago.

When I hit success with Riverdale. I've also, like, I love my father very much. My father, you know, put a lot of his life on hold in order to ensure that my brother and I were okay. And I owe him a lot for that. And if that comes through financial conversations, then so be it. Like, I want to get my dad the fucking car he wants. I want to get my dad the house he wants. You know, I want to make sure he's all good. It's just my father, my brother, and I and our family. So, I mean, that makes it a little easier for financial stability.

But, yeah, I don't really mind. You know, what else is it for? Yeah. You know, like once you realize the lifestyle you want to acquire financially, like I don't think there's anything more noble than taking care of your family with the financial independence that you've been given. So are you not, don't have a relationship with your mom? Not at all.

I mean, in truth, she lost her mind. And it was the, I think it was the consequence of some weird alchemy of addiction and mental instability and it's probably the greatest wound in my life and also the greatest driving force for my continuing in this industry but I miss her I miss her a lot she was an incredibly beautiful and artistic woman

every once in a while she'll reach out to me some weird hieroglyphic text some macabre you know Love lovecraftian texts that i try to decipher and try to pinpoint where she is but um we have a very very challenged relationship and i think before she had been lost to whatever madness she's currently in now, she really believed that I could be the best. And I think I still do it for her, that version of her, whatever that version of her was. To kind of keep her dream alive, whatever that dream is.

Do you and Dylan have conversations about it? Kind of. Kind of. Kind of. It's a huge wound for the both of us. Yeah. Huge wound. So I'm just, you know, a guy sitting in a buccal wheelchair with some mommy issues.

One of many of your guests, I'm sure. Oh, I was going to say was gonna say like sadly it's like this is life right like we all have our family shit and i appreciate you sharing it because unfortunately it's uh something that a lot of people experience where like keeping a family together it's way more rare than having a family that it's got its shit i tried for very many years i tried all the things that people said i should try and the things that i felt would be best to try and get her out of her station or whatever it was but you know what you can take a horse to water but you can't make a drink man I feel like at some point everyone experiences some type of mental health.

Oh yeah. Setback or not me, man. As we're like getting so deep. No, I'm fucking chill. Like I'm great. I'm'm good let's get to the sex alex what's something that you've worked through oh i mean public criticism for sure

it's big it it's really it's it's i'm a people pleaser and i I'm also, I think as a consequence of my incredibly strained relationship to my mother, the very first female voice in my life, I'm like a nurse. I'm one of those fixer guys. And that's not good. I've had to undo a lot of that in my late 20s. It caused a lot of pain to me, which is something I work through. And I have worked through in therapy and with friends and other people. But the criticism is interesting because it's funny. And going back to the Disney thing, this is always something that gets brought up,

which is, wow, Disney just really took it out on you guys, didn't they? And I hate when people say that because it completely disqualifies how the audience contributes to so much of the instability that occurs. People join in on the Feast for Crows as this sort of cacophony of criticism, and they don't ever hold themselves accountable for their own behavior as an individual, contributing to a mass of criticism, which I find to be completely ignorant. I know most artists I know hear hear the criticism almost all of them do myself included and and most of our natures will go oh man look at all these nice comments this is wonderful but we fucking will go to that one it doesn't matter what it is you know it can be about anything what is the comment and the criticism that gets you? I find for boys on Disney Channel, we were raised with a very, a sort of Prince Charming imagery.

And I think for the girls as well, there's this wholesome imagery that follows you around. And as I have aged and, and, you know, come into my own, um, like advanced adults, feelings of sexuality and, and of my adulthood and my life and all this sort of stuff. And I'm revealed to be through whatever medium, um, a sinful, dirty, little hairless ape, like the rest of us. Uh, there is a tremendous, there's, there's a bit of a fall from grace that occurs with that for all of us. But I think it's hard. I'm such a people pleaser that I take it hard personally when I feel like I am not helping people or making them feel better or being criticized for a humanity that I rarely try to show. Right. And this is such a woo-woo problem. But like, I don't know, I did take criticism quite hard for a long time, especially as

an employee, but also as like a child actor. I think that's something I've gotten over. I think, you know, my relationship to my family has been a very tense mental health conversation over time. But I've been sober for a year and some change now, which has been really great for me. And it's allowed me to do the kind of self-work that I think, and just the professional work, that has allowed me to really ask myself questions as an adult for the first time in my life and go wow maybe you feel this way dude maybe you feel that way dude it's fucking great yeah that's great i'm like a full i am a huge proponent for you know cognitive behavioral therapy and

psychiatry and all that sort of stuff when you talked about that because i think it is interesting to people that watched you so heavily on Disney Channel. And then you talk about this, like we have this image and this fall from grace. You kind of, you and your brother, when you went to college, kind of really removed yourself from all of it for a little bit.

Well, we, it wasn't a removal. We actually did the same thing, just in a different way. So if you think about it, as a child, you're sold as this immature public commodity, right? Like this juvenile thing. And then the world sees you as like this infantile entity. And then you hit your teens and you start to have this sexual maturation and this adult maturation. You start to see yourself in relation to your environment far differently. And so it's really an identity crisis. You start to want people to see you as

the identity that you see yourself as. And many in that case take to public sexual display, take to drug use, take to these means of investing the conversation of their life, a level of adulthood that they are not being afforded by the public. And I think my brother and I sat with each other and just kind of decided the best way to do that would be going away to school and coming out with a diploma. And that's for us, at least. But in very many ways, you know, that's an arrested development because I found myself in my early 20s going through a lot of that same dilemma just later.

And I think every single Disney star, I guess, except for you guys, it's like we watch them maybe get on stage and go in a sexual outfit and be like, I'm not a fucking kid anymore. And it's like shoving in our face. I'm an adult. I'm an adult. I'm an adult. Take me seriously. I'm not the little girl anymore. I think it's solved the same issue, um, to the public, but it didn't solve it within ourselves. Right. Like the, the publicity worked, right. But it didn't do the healing part you know you have to do the self-work in order to heal from that you have to have that open conversation with yourself in order to even grow past that and i think um i think i experienced that much of my early 20s uh after school because

i i got back into acting and the show riverdale took off overnight and and and reintroduced me this to this buffet of decadency that that I had I had just as much potential as I did as a child to fuck up um so I I think that sort of stuff is really valuable if you're actually sitting with yourself and doing doing the work yeah when you started talking about getting away from child acting, going to college and trying to kind of explore, it did make me think obviously about you and your sexuality. When did you start dating? Like how old were you when you had your first real relationship? You want to hear about how I lost my virginity? Please tell us. This is such a, this is such a great story. I feel like it says so much about me. Okay. I was 14 when I lost my virginity? Please tell us. This is such a great story. I feel like it says so much about me.

Okay. I was 14 when I lost my virginity. So this is still bowl cut guy, right? So just, you know, if you guys are good individual. I was on a family trip in Florida and I met this girl who was older. All right. So that's already dubious. And the first night we kind of made out, and the second night,

all my buddies had already lost their virginity at this point. I was 14, so that says another thing. We were down at the beach. This actually makes me nervous. It's so cringy. We were down at the beach. I, like, knocked on her hotel door. She came out, and we went down at the beach. I like, I like knocked on her, on her hotel door. She came out. We went down to the beach

and we were on some chaise lounges and I looked at her and I finally, my heart was beating like, and I finally mustered up enough courage to, to deliver a line that my brother has never,

ever let down for me. I went, I looked at her and I was like, so, are you like dtf and um she goes what and i go you know down to fuck oh no i was 14 okay she looked at me and she was like sure so we went back to the hotel room that is it's so cringy but it's incredible i look back now it's so funny uh and i text my brother and my buddy charlie who were staying we were all staying in the same hotel room because we were

fucking 14 right um i was like dude gotta get out of the room man i've got a girl coming over like you gotta get out of the room dude and so we're walking down the hall i got my arm around this girl we're walking down the hall and i see my brother and charlie coming walking towards me and as as we pass each other my mother just looks at me and goes what the fuck are we supposed to do and i looked at him and i said another line that he's never forgiven me for i looked at him i was like i don't know go play chess or something oh uh yeah lasted about 20 seconds and uh never talked to her again and after that i became truly a serial monogamist what a serial monogamist i went from long-term relationship to long-term relationship pretty consistent so the in and out moves like was not for you you're like I want to

be with someone so I can get better at 20 seconds maybe let's ramp it up to 60 seconds oh yeah no well actually I mean I not only not only that embarrassing display I actually I mean I love that story now because it's so stupid. It's so youthful that I think it's quite funny, but I ended up regretting it a little bit afterwards because I hadn't made it special at all. I sort of, I sort of got it out of the way. And, and that's not to say it needs to be, but for my own personal approach to it, I was kind of like, eh. Did you lose it before your brother? I did. Yeah. So he had no words of wisdom. No, actually, in very many ways, he looked at me and was like, well, I'm not doing that. So it was cool.

I got to be a guinea pig for him. But yeah, after that, I became a serial monogamous. Did you feel comfortable, though, in the beginning of hooking up with people or beginning to get into a relationship because of your fame? I've always been quite a paranoid person about it, actually. Yeah, quite a paranoid person. I can see that. I think there's always a sort of level of judgment

and performance that goes into that first experience that I think was compounded for me quite a bit because of my own insecurity of public discourse and all that. And I sort of dropped that after college. Okay. I got my first real girlfriend like, I mean, I had one at 15, but that was just young love. And then my girlfriend in college, after that, I had sort of come to terms with a lot of that stuff and was and, and was far

more okay. But for, yeah, yeah, for years that, that sort of, um, conversation around my recognizability, uh, made it quite hard for me to connect to people. I, I was never a, uh, a sort of one night stand guy ever. Couldn't, couldn't really do it. Didn't really have too many super casual partners in my life. Haven't had too many partners in my life just in general, but like not, not really, uh, haven't really crossed that bridge. And when you say you're super paranoid, do you think that go, that spans past just like relationships, like in general, just because of your career? Oh yeah. I mean, I think, I think as I've gotten older, I, what I've really been trying to unpack is, you know, the distinction between my public and private life.

You know, my public life has been a mess of showing my awkward teen years and all this sort of stuff to the world. world and I think I think it's a total natural consequence of my upbringing to feel a little nervous about vulnerability and connection in any way shape or form when it came to romantic partnerships or otherwise I like I was I was very much the product of my circumstances now now that is not a problem literally at all anymore because I've done I've done the work for it but yeah when I was younger. And in college, I had a girlfriend pretty much the whole time. So we were very close. Have you ever been cheated on?

Yeah, by almost every single one of my girlfriends. Oh. Hold on. Emotionally, yes. Very, very much. And my first girlfriend physically, yeah. How do you find out about the emotional cheating like everyone does texting oh yeah oh yeah cool i will say the current relationship i am in has woke me up to what

real compatibility and trust looks like in a way that I have never had before never had before and and I think I think I was also younger and stupid and not not the greatest partner either like I I was no saint I mean I was going through my own fucking traumas and shit and trying to reconcile that as a young 20 something. And, you know, now this is the first relationship where I can say, damn, like I have real trust here. Yeah. I was going to say not to put it all on you, Cole, but like if there's that theme of emotional cheating, I'm wondering if you've been able to find within yourself.

Oh, totally. Were you not giving? Totally, totally. Open. yourself like oh totally were you not giving totally totally open I mean I I've I've come to terms with my own inability to be emotionally vulnerable over time um and I don't blame I literally don't blame any of my partners for anything that has happened ever ever ever I I think it takes two to tango in every relationship that you're in and anyone that points the finger at another person and blames the entirety of of

some sort of uh miscommunication on them is probably not doing the self-work and in that way i will say yes um there's also you know i think we've convoluted a lot of the modern romantic uh conversation where sometimes it's just fundamental incompatibility. Totally. Sometimes you're just incompatible with someone and, you know, you're trying to fucking grease a wheel that ain't broken and it just doesn't, you know, it doesn't actually work. And it's not more complicated, so to speak. It's just two people that just don't really work.

So I don't know. I don't really blame anyone for anything. I agree. I think I was in the right place at the right time for every relationship I've ever had. just don't really work so i don't know i don't really blame anyone for anything i mean i think i think i was in the right place at the right time for every relationship i've ever had if all of your exes were in this room right now yeah what would they say about you um that probably most of my relationships were uh had a stronger sexual foundation than an emotional foundation for sure. Would your current girlfriend say that?

No. No, no. Progress. Yeah, it's progress for me. I think also that's what your 20s are for. Totally. I love it. You know, like we've gotten,

we've had a very complicated relationship to mistake now in 2023. But most of us forget that your 20s are pretty much almost primarily all mistakes. Yep. Not mistakes because that, you know, it shouldn't feel regretful, but it's definitely a learning process. We're all fucking sinful things. Totally. All of us are stupid and fucked up and selfish and narcissistic, but also beautiful and loving and loyal and caring. And I think as you get older, you kind of tease out what makes you feel better and what doesn't make you feel better. And, you know, I'm 30 now.

It's not that I'm trying to speak from an enlightened place because I know that I'm going to continue to fuck up in my life. But like, I definitely think i learned a lot from those last relationships for sure you're gonna want to light the cigarette for this one great um thank you for giving me you had a relationship with a castmate on riverdale how did you navigate a breakup with someone that you work with oh it was really. It was really hard for both of us. And that's okay. I think the work thing got difficult because it was hard to suspend

all of the way we felt about each other. And it didn't afford us the luxury of distance to really overcome that. I know we both did quite a bit of damage to each other in that we're good friends now, which is awesome. We work really well together now uh but i think that was exactly where we both needed to be we we were in a foreign city working a very intense schedule 14 hours a day oftentimes six days a week um alone and we really leaned on each other while also going through the elected trauma of this incredible overnight success. A ton of criticism, a ton of expectation. And I think we did the best we could, really. I really do think we did.

And I'm very grateful in very many ways. I was able to go through it with someone who was going through the exact same set of circumstances as me. But also in very many ways, all the cliches about dating someone you work with are very true. Do you think it lasted longer because you were working together? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there was a lot of pressure towards other people, really. I think if I had loved myself a little more, I probably would have left a little earlier. But I just felt like I had to take care of a lot of people around me, which was not good for me. I probably should have exercised a bit more selfishness in that situation. Yeah, that's a theme for you.

I also, I think the complicated thing was I was so private. I'm private with all my relationships. I'm private with my current relationship in very many ways. That we didn't make a big deal when we split. So afterwards I was photographed with, as a single man, dating other women, and I think it caused people to think there was something dubious going on. And I took a moral stance that I was never going to talk about it. It didn't need to be said, but I have realized now in hindsight that I probably should have said something almost right away. So you're saying the

timeline looked a little murky of like, absolutely. People didn't know you broke up. And then we see these pictures of you with another woman. Oh yeah, absolutely. And then they're like, wait, are you cheating on her? But you guys had already ended. Because I didn't think the public needed to be afforded the luxury of my own heartbreak or whatever the hell that was. But I'm realizing that that gray area created a lot of rumor and gossip that would end up affecting me and my mental health quite a bit afterwards. Oh, really?

So in an inverse way, the silence and mystery of that gray area created a fertile petri dish of bullshit. That was my own mistake. Why do you think it affected you so much? Because I am a sucker for validation and I want people to think I'm a good guy. Like all of us. Yep. You know, I think all of us have aspirations to be you know morally stand up people and when people go hey that person's a fucking piece of shit all of us are affected by

that yeah um i don't think that's a consequence of my youth or anything any more than the next person i just think you know i i have a very complicated relationship to the public, which is how much I let them in and how much I don't let them in. And, you know, a lot of things probably should have been done differently in the past, but that's who I am. And it's made me who I am now, so I don't really regret it too much. Why did the relationship end? I won't go into that too much, but I will say it was mutual. Can I tell you something? Please.

I promised myself today that if you fucking said the word mutual, I was going to call you out because think about this. I'm speaking as a twin, so I'll oftentimes say we and mutual and other things too. No. No, please call me out. Someone had to have made the first step to end it. I left. You left. I did. Thank you. Yes, please call me out. Someone had to have made the first step to end it. I left. You left.

I did. Thank you. Yes, I left. But to be honest, when you're in a relationship for that long and someone leaves, it's not like someone's like, what? Yes. There's not, it's not a surprise. So I'm always, you know, I don't like to say like, oh, I split. It's not like, you know, Paul Simon, 50 ways to leave your lover.

It's like, you get it. It was time. Yeah, it was time. And I think in very many ways this was right before COVID. So it also gave us the space because we got locked down. That's great. You know, which I think was good. But yeah, you keep calling me on my,

on my mutual bullshit. Mutual. I was like, that motherfucker, if he walks in here, no fucking. Yeah, you want the tea. No, that's okay. I get it. I get it. Okay. How did you and your current girlfriend meet? Friends of friends, which is great. Yeah. The first time I met her, she was actually in a five-year relationship. Wow. And we didn't speak again for like two years. And by the time we met again, she was single. And it was very funny because we, I was having a party at my house and she came through and we started talking and joking and then one or two people left and then two or three people left and then it was just us talking and we were just talking about relationships and

life and stuff like that and it was it was a practically it was practically like a handshake agreement and honestly from that moment on uh we didn't stop spending every day with one another it's like it is she's my best friend we get along so well we do everything together uh the only reason i'm allowed on the show on valentine's is because she loves you so uh i fucking love it cole it's great i'm earning major brownie points for her right now oh my god you have to understand talking when i told her that that i could be on the podcast, she was like, oh, yeah. Honestly, it's been two years and some change, and it's felt like a fucking week. It's felt like a week.

It's incredible. Wow. It's incredible. I honestly, I've never experienced this level of compatibility, and it makes me look on on my youth and go well you really didn't know right which is which is nuts I mean and as a consequence of our relationship my life has just improved I've I've gotten sober I've I've questioned my existence in a way that that I never have before my I've had my best financial years my career career is doing better. It's like when the private sphere is locked in, everything else comes from that foundation.

And it is in no small part thanks to her. You turned 30 last year. I did. Was it a moment of reflection for you personally? Oh, yeah. How did you feel? I don't know. You know when you're a kid, you don't really see anyone past 25 yes and i i like like everyone's 25 right even if they're like 60 you're like oh

you're 25 when i was young i thought by 25 i would have it all worked out yeah i'd have the house and the white picket fence and the kids and the labrador retriever and all that bullshit that we grew up believing um and my father was 27 when he had the two of us wow and when i hit 30 i had some puby facial hair and some long hair pulled into a fucking hipster man bun like a total cliche some silver lake cliche and i i was standing on the beach on the same sand that my father had stood on when he was 30 but two two three-year-old twins were running around him when he was 30 and he had the same hair and the same pubic facial hair and we look very similar and I said wow our lives are really fucking different

really different I don't know if I've fully come to terms with it yet but I feel more confident and more self-assured than I ever have before and I think all of us have had delayed gratification with the aging process and in our generation than our parents generation

like they were just fucking all gas, no brakes to pretty much every fucking thing that was happening in their life. Yep. They were like, fuck it, you know, I'm 22. It's time to have six fucking kids. And you're like, damn. Whoa.

Damn. I agree. All of us now, you know, we're 30. We're like, I just got it together. I lived through two recessions and fucking all this shit that we've gone through that that most of us have have a kind of arrested development in very many ways that now at 30 I can say I'm breaking out of and most of our generation is breaking out of now

in our in our 30s I cannot thank you enough for coming on I feel like this was exciting for me because I've watched you for so long so I know so many people are going to be like oh my god I feel like this was exciting for me because I've watched you for so long. So I know so many people are going to be like, oh my God, I feel like I really got to know Cole today in a way that elevates everything. I feel like it's exciting to watch you on TV, but it makes me that much more invested in your career and where you're going. And I'm just so happy for you. And I can't wait to see what's next. And thank you.

Thank you for letting me fill this studio with four cigarettes. Yeah, I have an interview tomorrow. The person seems like, what the person's even like what the fuck smells like an old lady's house in here thank you for coming on cole thank you for having me