Cole Sprouse Just Broke His Silence After Dylan’s Wild Ancestry Discovery, and His Response Is Peak Sibling Energy
Cole Sprouse Just Broke His Silence After Dylan’s Wild Ancestry Discovery, and His Response Is Peak Sibling Energy
Cole Sprouse woke up to a headline this week that no amount of media training could have prepared him for. His twin brother Dylan had gone on his podcast and told the internet that the two of them come from one extremely tangled family tree. Cole’s response was immediate, honest, and very funny: he wants absolutely nothing to do with it.
The whole thing started on Tuesday’s episode of the “Wildmen Podcast,” which Dylan co-hosts with Brendan Columbus. The 34-year-old actor revealed he had been digging into his family history on Ancestry, and what he found sent him down a rabbit hole he clearly did not see coming.
What Dylan Actually Found on Ancestry
Dylan explained that his dad’s side of the family is “pretty fractured,” so he had never really known many of those relatives. Once he started finding them on Ancestry and comparing notes, a strange pattern emerged. Both sides of his family were in California during the Gold Rush in the 1800s, and by the end of the century, the two families had joined together by marriage.
Then, in Dylan’s words: “And then they diverged, and then they married again [through] my mom and my dad.” He was laughing as he said it, clearly tickled by the odd shape of his own family tree.
What first made him suspicious was the twins. Dylan had always believed that twins in the family came from his mom’s side. “We had seven sets of twins in four generations. Which is crazy,” he said. But then he learned that his father’s uncles were identical twins too, and his theory clicked into place: “The reason we have a lot of twins is because it’s the same family!”
The Phone Call That Ended in a Hang-Up
Naturally, Dylan did what any brother would do: he called his twin immediately. He rang Cole up, sent him a picture of the family tree, and announced that he had just found out some extremely wild news.
Cole’s response was not what Dylan was hoping for. According to Dylan, his brother looked at the evidence, said “Not looking at that,” and hung up on him. That is the entire exchange. A lifetime of twin telepathy, and this is where it draws the line.
Dylan also threw in one more piece of family lore for good measure. He claimed one of his aunts was one of a pair of twins who “ate her twin in the womb,” and that when doctors cut open a cyst in her shoulder, it contained teeth and hair. He then joked that despite everything, he does not “have webbed toes.”
Cole’s Instagram Reaction Says Everything
Once the headlines started circulating, Cole finally addressed the situation the only way he knows how: with dry humor. On October 20, he posted to his Instagram Story: “No media training on earth can prep you to read this clickbait headline at 10am.”
In a follow-up post, he took a playful swipe at everyone who still confuses the two brothers. “It’s that time of year when I get tagged in Victoria’s Secret content ’cause people still don’t know who married Barbara,” he wrote, referring to Dylan’s wife, model Barbara Palvin. Barbara walked this year’s Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show just weeks after welcoming the couple’s first child, with Dylan cheering her on from the front row.
A Quick Refresher on the Sprouse Twins
For anyone who grew up in the 2000s, no introduction is needed, but here it is anyway. Dylan and Cole Sprouse are the sons of Matthew Sprouse and Melanie Wright. Dylan played Zack and Cole played Cody on Disney Channel’s “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody,” one of the biggest kids’ shows of its era. Cole later reinvented himself as Jughead Jones on “Riverdale,” while Dylan stepped back from acting for a while before returning to screens and launching his podcast.
Dylan married Barbara Palvin in July 2023, and the couple welcomed their first child, a daughter named Sylvie, just last month. He is firmly in his new-dad era, which makes this whole genealogy adventure even funnier. New celebrity parents are having quite the month, but Dylan is the only one rewriting his family tree between diaper changes.
Before You Believe the Headline, Read the Fine Print
It is worth noting that Dylan delivered all of this as a joke, and several outlets covering the story pointed out that marriages between members of two families back in the 1800s do not, on their own, establish that his parents are closely related in any meaningful sense. The podcast offered no evidence of that, and Dylan’s punchline was clearly meant as comedy, not genealogy.
Still, you have to admire the commitment. Most people find a second cousin on Ancestry and move on. Dylan found a 150-year-old family loop, called his twin about it, got hung up on, and turned the whole thing into podcast gold.
As for Cole, his position remains unchanged: he is not looking at that picture, and honestly, who can blame him? For more on the story, see Page Six’s report on Dylan’s podcast revelations and Unilad’s coverage of Cole’s Instagram reaction.
