Cole Sprouse found himself in the spotlight after his twin brother Dylan made a startling claim about their family history. The actor sarcastically mocked the headlines after Dylan revealed connections between their parents’ family lines.
The brothers, best known for The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, found themselves trending for a rather unusual reason. Dylan’s genealogy research suggested that their family lines had crossed more than once. The discovery prompted his provocative description of their ancestry.
Cole Sprouse mocked headlines about Dylan’s family-tree discovery
As per Entertainment Weekly, Cole shared a screenshot of a headline about Dylan’s claim on his Instagram Stories on October 20. “No media training on earth can prep you to read this clickbait headline at 10am,” he wrote, reacting to the unexpected news cycle.
Earlier that day, Dylan discussed the discovery on his Wildmen podcast with co-host Brendan Columbus. He explained that an Ancestry search revealed that both sides of the family had lived in California during the Gold Rush. Their family lines reportedly connected through marriage in the late 1800s before diverging. They later intersected again when their parents, Matthew Sprouse and Melanie Wright, married in 1990. They divorced two years later.
“Long story short, Cole and I are children of incest,” Dylan declared. However, the outlet clarified that the twins’ parents were not close relatives. Their family lines reportedly intersected several generations earlier.
Dylan also believed the discovery might explain the unusually high number of twins in their family. He had previously assumed that twins ran in their mother’s family. However, he later learned that his father’s uncles were identical twins. “We have seven sets of twins in four generations, which is crazy. That’s a lot of twins. The reason why we have a lot of twins is it’s the same family!” he said on the podcast.
Dylan revealed that Cole wasn’t interested when he first tried sharing the discovery privately. “He goes, ‘Not looking at that.’ Closed it, hung up on me,” Dylan recalled.
The brothers also joked about matters unrelated to their family history. Cole also joked that people still confused the brothers’ personal lives, including which twin married model Barbara Palvin. Dylan was the one who married Palvin in 2023, and the couple recently welcomed daughter Sylvie. Dylan attended the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show on October 18 to support Palvin’s runway return.
