The Suite Life of Zack & Cody's Kim Rhodes Says Dylan Sprouse Refused to Say Fat Joke on Set

Kim Rhodes is sharing how her TV sons Dylan and Cole Sprouse had her back. 

The actress recalled how the twins stood up for her while they were working on their Disney Channel show from the aughts The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.

For instance, one of the times Kim—who played Carey Martin, mom to the Sprouse brothers' characters Zack and Cody Martin—said Dylan came to her defense was when she was pregnant.

"Of course the show dealt with it by making fat jokes," she noted on a November episode of the Back to the Best podcast. "One of my favorite memories is Dylan had a line that was a fat joke, and he just kept skipping over it. It was like in the middle of a chunk of dialogue. So, he kept skipping this laugh line and skipping it and skipping it and skipping it." 

The 54-year-old said Dylan skipped the line again when they were filming in front of a studio audience and that an unnamed executive producer then interrupted the scene.

The executive producer "goes, 'Cut! Dylan, say the line,'" Kim said. "And [Dylan] goes, 'I would not disrespect any woman that way let alone this woman. You write something funny and I'll say it.'"

And to this day, she appreciates him speaking up.

"That's my little man," Kim added about Dylan before also giving a shout-out to Cole. "They're both my little men."

In fact, Kim said the actors "defended me all the way through" and detailed another time Dylan and Cole were by her side. She said they called out a "well-meaning person who took their job very—possibly a little too—seriously" after the unidentified individual scolded her for swearing. 

"It was one of my earliest experiences with Dylan and Cole when I was like, 'Oh we're gonna be good,'" Kim shared. "I said something, and this individual held up the swear jar and shook their finger at me. I'm crumbling inside. I just assume anybody who isn't me has the power to tell me what I should be doing. And Cole goes, 'We've worked with Adam Sandler.' And Dylan goes, 'Yeah, we've heard 'em all already. I think she's fine.'"

And she said she wasn't the only one Dylan and Cole looked out for. 

"They both were very protective of everyone on set," Kim added. "It wasn't just me."

E! News has reached out to Disney for comment but has yet to hear back.

The Suite Life of Zack & Cody—which was a sitcom about twin brothers living at a hotel—ran from 2005 to 2008 and led to the spinoff series The Suite Life on Deck and the film The Suite Life Movie.

To read facts about the show you may not know, keep reading.

1. Initially, producers considered using Dylan and Cole Sprouse as names for the Martin twins before ultimately deciding to give the stars different names for their characters.

2. Dylan and Cole were similar to their characters, as Dylan was the more troublesome twin (like his troublemaking character Zack) while Cole was the more studious one, similar to the more responsible Cody.

3. Creator Danny Kallis revealed to the New York Times that he and co-creator Jim Geoghan actually came up with the concept for the show 20 years prior while working on the sitcom Silver Spoons. 

4. Originally, Ashley Tisdale auditioned for London Tipton, the flighty Paris Hilton-esque hotel heiress, and Brenda Song read for Maddie, the sarcastic girl next door who works as the clerk .

"They were going full, true Paris Hilton parody," Song told W Magazine. "And when we read for the roles they were like, ‘No, actually, you guys switch parts.' Hollywood wasn't doing that then."

5. When she was 15, Brenda landed the role of London the same time she received early acceptance to her dream college: Harvard University. It was her father, who is a schoolteacher, who encouraged her to pursue acting, saying, "Here's the thing. You have an amazing opportunity, if acting is what you want to do...You go to college to figure out what you want to do, but if this is what you want to do, you have an opportunity to do it."

6. A natural brunette, Ashley dyed her hair blonde for the series.

7. Ashley admitted her kiss with High School Musical co-star and best friend Zac Efron when he guest-starred was "the worst" because he's like "a brother" to her. Well, that and he tried to kiss with tongue.

"I was like, 'Get away from me!' I closed my mouth so fast," she told Elle. "I was like, 'This is Disney Channel, we don't kiss like that on Disney Channel!'

8. Another awkward kiss alert! Selena Gomez had her first kiss when she guest-starred in 2006, playing the twins' classmate Gwen. "It was my first kiss—[and] on-camera! It was one of the worst days of my life!" Gomez said on The Kelly Clarkson Show of kissing Dylan, admitting it was Cole she had the crush on before being cast. "I was obsessed with that show, and I thought we were going to be together."

9. British identical twins Becky and Milly Rosso were actually just audience members when they were picked out of the crowd by producers to play the boys' love interests, Janice and Jessica.

"[The executive producer] heard that we were English and we were twins, and she asked us to audition for the show," Milly told KidzWorld. "So, we took acting lessons for several months and we auditioned to be on one episode, and they liked how we played the characters, so they put us in 7 episodes!"

10. In 2010, the New York Post reported Dylan and Cody, then 17, were making $20,000 each per episode. In the article, one agent claimed that at the start of the series, "When Ashley Tisdale was on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody...I heard she was making $9,000 an episode, and the boys got $12,000 to 15,000 per episode."

11. When Phill Lewis, who played fan-favorite hotel manager Mr. Moseby, returned to Scrubs to film an appearance for the medical comedy's final episode, he brought along two super-fans. "I actually brought Dylan and Cole along with me to the set that day," he told Jim Hill Media. "They were big fans of that show. So they were thrilled to be there with me as Scrubs closed out its run."

12. Disney Channel once filmed a pilot for a spinoff starring Selena that centered on Suite Life's hotel engineer, Arwin Hochauser (Brian Stepanek). In Arwin! or Housebroken, she would've played Arwin's niece, but the network ultimately decided to pass on the project in 2007, freeing her up to star in Wizards of Waverly Place.

13. Dylan made headlines when he opened up about the twins attempting to pitch a fourth season of The Suite Life on Deck to Disney that would also set up a new series to help the crew they had worked with for years remain employed after they decided to go to college.

"We said, 'If we're going to do one last season it's going to be on our terms—we're going to produce it and it'll be a set up for a new show'," Dylan explained to Vulture.

14. The concept was for Zack and Cody to return to Boston, where they would mentor a young boy living in the hotel, setting that character up for his own show. But when Disney turned down their idea, only to come back to the twins with a similar pitch that took place in Miami and starred Selena Gomez, the Sprouses walked away, according to Dylan.

15. In 2016, Alyson Stoner, who played the recurring character Max, revealed she and Cole briefly dated during the show.

"The first boy, I guess, that I had like a crush on and dated was Cole Sprouse," she said on The Night Time Show of their early romance when they were both just 11. (For your viewing pleasure, here's a video Cole bringing her into the middle of an on-set interview when asked if he had a girlfriend.)

Alas, she revealed he broke up with her on her birthday. "He just said, 'It's not going to work out.'"

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