Cole Sprouse Has Come a Long Way Since 'Big Daddy'
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TWO THINGS CAN be true at the same time. Cole Sprouse is now 31 years old; Cole Sprouse is now in his fourth decade of appearing on your screens. And after last year's conclusion of Riverdale, the dark, reimagined, live-action version of Archie comics that aired for seven increasingly eccentric seasons on the CW, he's ready to move on to the next phase of his already-lengthy career. But he's not trying to look forward without looking back; the "weirdo" Jughead Jones, who he played for 136 episodes, is always going to be part of what he brings to the table.
"I don't know if I really think of it as closing the book. It might be a chapter ending," he says over Zoom from his home, wearing a comfortable sweatshirt and sporting a bit more facial hair than you'd usually expect. "I don't think it's ever really been my mission statement to ask the audience to renew their understanding of me. I've never been that kind of person. I think the most interesting careers are looked at over the length of the career in question. For me, the richness of a person's career is only evident after doing something for 30, 40, 50 years."
An interesting choice of numbers, considering he's already been at it for more than 30 years. His first series regular role was shared with his twin brother, Dylan, in the Chuck Lorre sitcom Grace Under Fire (which debuted in 1993) as a literal infant, and he's managed to reenter the scene as something of a new Cole Sprouse every few years since. Grace Under Fire was followed by the crude but touching Big Daddy in 1999, a film that found Sprouse (in a role again shared with his brother) acting opposite Adam Sandler; the twins began appearing the next year as Ross's sometimes-there-but-often-not son Ben on Friends. Their next era featured two separate iterations of The Suite Life, the Disney Channel sitcom on which Cole and Dylan starred as a pair of very-different-but-always-up-to-something teens who live in a hotel and, later, on a cruise ship. Sprouse still talks to the entire Suite Life cast and some of the crew to this day.
After a brief break from acting (between 2012 and 2016, when he attended New York University), Sprouse reemerged to land the most vital role of his adult career to date: the burger-chomping, brooding teen-sleuth version of Jughead Jones on Riverdale. While the first season was a Twin Peaks–inspired murder mystery that earned the show a loyal audience and much buzz, it continued on for six more seasons, each campier than the last, before concluding in 2023. In case campier doesn't paint the full picture of where Riverdale eventually went: Characters fought bears, traveled through time, and eventually even got superpowers.
Sprouse's newest era begins with the release of Lisa Frankenstein, a horror-comedy written by Diablo Cody (of Juno and Jennifer's Body fame) and directed by Zelda Williams (Robin Williams's daughter, making her behind-the-camera feature debut). He plays "The Creature," who, much like Sprouse, contains multitudes: He's both the love interest to Kathryn Newton's titular Lisa, as well as a murderous reanimated corpse who's got rotting skin, spits out bugs, and doesn't have the ability to speak. It's a bold, daring performance, and one he pulls off to great, entertaining effect.
"I had a conversation with myself about acting, and after Riverdale, I landed on the idea that I should be doing films that my childhood self would enjoy watching, and this film met a lot of those criteria for me," he says, before alluding to something he's mentioned in the past—that he was brought into the acting world at such a young age that he never actively made the decision to enter the industry. "If I had chosen acting, this would be a film that I would've loved to do."
Lisa Frankenstein is a fun choice for a performer looking to enter yet another new era and generally make the choices he really wants to make. It's exciting in a Tim Burton–esque way, but with the sharp, cult-classic potential of Diablo Cody's previous horror effort, Jennifer's Body. If it's any indication of where this young industry veteran's career could go, the future will be exciting to see.
Sprouse spoke with Men's Health about how exactly Lisa Frankenstein became his first choice in a new chapter, his old Riverdale pal-turned-awards-season darling Charles Melton, the roles that got away, and his undying love for cult classics.
Men's Health: What drew you to Lisa Frankenstein as your first role after Riverdale?
Cole Sprouse: It involves a lot of practical effects, it was basically a movie made with friends, and I had always wanted to play a monster when I was a kid. So it felt like a big checkbox for me, but also a bit of a high five to my childhood self.
The entertainment arts can be confusing, because it's supposed to be a passion while simultaneously being a job. So you're often confronted with the choice between art versus commerce, and trying to keep the passion as alive as possible while also making a financially stable career choice. This one was really about doing a movie that reminded me how acting can be a pursuit of love and passion. It just so happened to also involve all of my friends, which made it even better.
This is Diablo Cody's first horror-adjacent movie since Jennifer's Body, which has become a huge cult hit. Was her involvement—and the campiness her script brings—part of what interested you?
Diablo's got an incredibly strong voice in her work, and her dialogue specifically has that very camp nature to it. It was funny because when Jennifer's Body came out, it didn't really do well commercially. It took audiences a while to get a taste for it, and it became a cult classic almost in hindsight.
Where audiences are now is much more prepared for that tone. Diablo has slowly and steadily garnered a following, and now people understand the tone that Jennifer's Body was going for far better than they did at the time. Zelda and I had talked quite a bit about tone and especially Creature, because Creature has to set a tone without any dialogue. Zelda, Diablo, and I have similar tastes in movies, and I knew almost immediately what we were aiming for here.
Were you extra conscious, knowing that Riverdale was wrapping up, in what kind of role you were going to position yourself with in the aftermath?
I knew this was going to be my first movie coming out after Riverdale, but I can't say it felt too conscious, to be honest. One thing I was thinking about was that I didn't want whatever I did post-Riverdale to feel like a complete departure from camp, because Riverdale is very camp.
And I'm not a big believer in the 180—when an actor goes from television to film and thinks, I'm going to do something completely different. I didn't really want it to feel like that. I wanted it to be something that felt palatable, something that didn't feel like a complete departure, but perhaps also something that felt just a little bit different. The fact that this was a purely physical role with no dialogue in a movie written by Diablo hit that mark for me. But ultimately, at the end of the day, the way the audience perceives your career is out of your control. I just wanted to do something my kid self would love, and that was it.
The longer you go without speaking in the movie, the more interesting your performance becomes. How did you prepare for that?
The approach was two-pronged. I really wanted to make sure Kathryn didn't feel like she was left hanging at all. She carries so much weight in this movie, and I wanted to make sure that, no pun intended, she wasn't acting with a dead body. And then I worked with a mime for about three months, and we focused on emotional, physical movement work, and that really helped get me into character. We broke it down according to how human Creature was throughout the script, so certain limbs, certain movements would get a lot easier over time.
And this mime and I—his name is Lorin Salm—we tried to make sure that every movement felt curated according to how much of his muscles and bones were working and what was reattached. It was challenging, but the biggest thing you learn is that great writing really helps carry a lot of the weight. I had developed a lot of crutches that I lean on, which I didn't have anymore, so it was a brand-new set of challenges and a lot of fun. Zelda also comforted me by saying, "Look, a lot of what you're doing is going to be captured in wide shots, so a lot of that theatrical physical work is going to be visible." It allowed me the space to move a bit more broadly, so that I could actually lean in to what I had done.
How intense was your physical prep working with a professional mime?
I normally work with a trainer just for physical fitness, but the mime and I had pretty extensive warmups every day. We practiced something called suspension, which is essentially the suspension of your breath, the filling of your whole body, and then the incredibly conscious and intentional understanding of every little movement in your body. When you're holding that much tension at all times, it can be a bit exhausting. So we were stretching and warming up, and we were rolling around on the floor. It was very actor-y, man. I'm very glad I had private sessions with Lorin, because I feel like I might've been a bit embarrassed if anyone walked in and saw me doing what I was doing.
It's interesting how it seems like you're all able to pull different things from past projects. You mentioned the camp from Riverdale, and Kathryn has done some great horror work in Freaky.
Absolutely. We're all the culmination of the past projects we work on. Kathryn has done comedy, too, and I spent eight years on a sitcom for children, which is essentially like children's theater, which meant I was able to be louder and broader. And to be honest, I was shocked I was even able to pull anything from that again.
Do you look back to projects in your past—working with people like Adam Sandler in Big Daddy or David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston in Friends—often?
Yeah, I look back with a lot of fondness. I don't know how much of it is applicable; every project demands a new approach, depending on the tone. A lot of the process after you get off something like Riverdale, or one of those longer projects, is unlearning a lot of what you learned. But every once in a while, a certain tool in the toolbox comes back up and you go, "Man, I actually could use this again," and you dust it off and you prep it for work.
I've had an incredibly lucky—or privileged—run, especially on TV, and I've gotten to work with a lot of people that are far more experienced. Probably the best thing to do, and I'm grateful that I did it in those situations, is just sit down, shut up, and listen. I had a lot of people hold my hand along the way, which was really nice, and if any of it is applicable, then I'll use it moving forward.
Big Daddy was such a vital and huge role for you. Do you keep in touch with Adam?
Adam and I talk every once in a while, actually, and he's coming to L.A. soon to shoot something that I'm going to go visit him on. I saw him at the Uncut Gems premiere, and it was wonderful. I hadn't seen him for quite a long time, and we just sat and talked and had some drinks for an hour at the after-party. Which was so unnecessary, because it's his day—he really didn't need to do that. But that's just kind of the guy he is. He's very grounded, and he's always been that kind of dude, from what I recall.
You've been asked recently about your Riverdale castmate Charles Melton and the success he's had with May December. I found it really interesting when he referred to his time on Riverdale as "my Juilliard." Do you see it the same way?
Absolutely, dude. In fact, that philosophy is one of the reasons why Charles and I are still so close. It can be hard to consistently maintain gratefulness during heavy work schedules, but it's the mark of a true professional, and it takes work every day. I loved that quote from Charles. It was well said, and it's nice to see that gratefulness. That can be quite difficult.
I also like to think that show was a training ground of sorts. I don't think there's ever going to be another opportunity in my life to do the insane storylines where one week you're waterboarding someone with maple syrup and the next week you're having a fight in a junkyard with a bunch of hillbillies. It's fun and it's also hectic: It's two takes of every scene, you're shooting ten to 12 pages a day, often six days a week, for ten months in a row. I don't think the industry's going to be using the formula of 23 hour-long episodes a season as much, thanks to the streaming model. It's a lot of time. But—if you've read your Malcolm Gladwell—it's the full 10,000 hours.
You guys got to jump all over the genre spectrum on Riverdale. I'm a big David Lynch fan, so I really loved the Twin Peaks–iness of season 1.
Me too. Season 1's still my favorite.
But like you said, you got to do all different things. Now you're doing a horror-comedy. What's the genre direction you want to go in next?
I don't know if I really think about my career in terms of looking for specific genres that interest me; it's a bit more intuitive. You read something and you go, I could really picture myself as that character, and then you get on set and you hope it falls into place that way. I'd love to figure out a formula to understanding cult classics a little bit better—movies like Rocky Horror that have a resurrection of sorts. They have their first life, then they have their second life. I'd love to try and find a way to stoke that fascination again.
There are always going to be parts you don't get and parts you do get. You're just lucky if you get to work as it is, so taking a super-curated approach is a privilege and often not necessarily a reality. Ultimately, I hope to work with great people that challenge me and with directors that are open and collaborative. That's the only real criteria I approach stuff with now.
What are some of the parts that got away?
Honestly, dude, I have so many stories. My brother and I auditioned for Thing One and Thing Two in The Cat in the Hat when we were younger. We showed up to this dance studio, and our mom had put us in these stupid Thing One and Thing Two outfits to try and get the gig, and it was horrible. The casting directors were like, "Go wild." That was their only direction, because that's what Thing One and Thing Two do—they just go apeshit.
Dylan and I—I don't know how it happened, but we went insane. You tell two seven-year-olds to go wild, and they'll go wild. We broke a mirror on one of the walls of the dance studio and then somehow ended up in a full-on fistfight, totally unprompted. It was one of maybe the worst callback auditions we've ever done but one of the ones that stick out the most. Needless to say, we did not get the part.
Since you have an interest in cult classics, have you seen anything lately that you think went underappreciated and could eventually get the attention it deserves?
I don't know how underappreciated it is, because it got a lot of critical praise, but I really, really loved Godzilla Minus One. And I remember that when Where the Wild Things Are came out, it also really had a strong critical reception, though I actually don't know the numbers on how it did commercially. That movie lives in my head a lot.
Coincidentally, your movie isn't the only reimagining of Frankenstein to hit theaters in the past several months. Have you seen Poor Things yet?
Shamefully, I actually haven't seen it yet. I've been stuck in the publicity circuit for this, but I'm a huge fan of [Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos]. The Lobster is probably one of my favorite movies of all time. And I hear the performances in Poor Things are just next-level.
We also have Nosferatu coming out, and we also apparently have another Frankenstein on the way. So people like myself, who love monster movies, are getting a bit of a monster renaissance, which I'm all too excited for.
Have you and your brother discussed working on anything together again?
Yeah, we actually have. It's not off the table! But a lot of the stuff that's twin-y is pretty lame; the twin thing can become a circus act if it's not done well. And honestly, most of the time when it is done well, it's usually one actor trying to show off by playing both twins. So it's just about finding something that's cool and interesting and that actually plays with the twin idea a little deeper than, like, "What if you said something at the same time?" [Laughs.]
This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
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