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've never talked about before. Sure. Yeah. 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 this curation that I believe does a tremendous disservice to actual guests on something. And the conversational nature of just the podcast space in general, but particularly yours, is really refreshing. My publishers are obviously not here. Cole showed up alone. They They know that they have very little control over the lunacy, 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 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 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. Okay, so let's get into it. Let's go back to 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/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 then 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 US to Studio City, between Studio City and Long Beach. And that's when we started acting.

Okay. Twins are a lot. Have your parents ever talked to you about how hard it was in the beginning? Were they ready to be parents and ready for two 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. We had diaper commercials.

What did your parents explain to you as to why you were auditioning so young?

Well, my mother needed an income. I think there's two types of kids within the child acting business There's the 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 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 on her job or careers.

I mean, it made me think of Mary Kate and Ashley.

It's a great example. Yeah.

Because 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, five hours you can work or something?

Even less. Every year it gets a little bit more. But in most cases, a baby can only work an hour or two hours.

When you think about that, you as a kid being pushed- I wasn't conscious until this last year, so please go ahead.

Cole's like, I don't even know where I am. I don't remember fucking breakfast.

No, it is crazy because I was thinking about that of the child labor laws of how you have a better way to-I, too, often think of child labor laws. And how do you How did you feel about that, Cole?

I mean, to be honest, I get a lot of people asking me like, Oh, man, you really went through the gamut. Oh, man, all this. But in very many ways, it was like the golden ticket from Willy Wanka. 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, goal? Let's open the door.

I don't know. People are all cool about- It's fine. Everyone smoking weed in a studio. But not a fucking Can I have tobacco? And everyone gets like this.

It's fine. It's fucking fine. I'm curious, did you even go to elementary school?

I did. It was off and on. 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? 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. Dylan and I, Dylan, specifically, was a huge bully. So our navigation through elementary school and middle school, we were like fucking dicks.

How would he bully people?

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 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 was like, what the fuck? Thanks, Cole.

Oh, no, I say this all. Everyone knows if he's a bully.

And he's fine with it.

I don't know if he's fine with it. I think he still got some stuff I have to work out. Yeah, totally.

So how are the two of you different in personality? If people don't know you, they just know your on-screen personalities, what is the difference personality-wise?

My brother's a lot more stubborn. I would say pig-headed as his brother, but he is very much a natural leader. A lot of people respect his opinion because he goes into his opinions incredibly boldly, where I will tiptoe and sense the room. Yeah, it's interesting. We're very, very different. And I think most twins get more distinct as time goes on. But we're still best friends. I mean, he It was 10 minutes for me.

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 the biggest amount of distance ever had between each other. And we felt it, man. It was sad. It genuinely made me upset.

So back to what you were saying about your parents split when you were how old.

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 in a little baby seating Switzerland. And we were down this little bike path because Europeans love that shit. And 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'd like to think there was this idyllic origin.

Were they on the same page about your careers, though? No. Okay.

No. My mother definitely was fascinated by the industry far more than my father was. My father's very blue collar dude, grew up super, super rough. He's an automotive repair Sherman. 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 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 got to strike this vein while But I think he understands that more than anything.

When you say that your parents obviously were on different pages, at what age did you recognize that? And what were those conversations?

Well, 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 than my father does. Yes. And it's interesting because Because in very many ways, the court system, especially in cases of divorce and in cases of custody, is in 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. He desperately wanted us to be normal kids. And my mother wanted us to be more than or a bit more of a caricature of two 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. Usually, the mother would be getting custody. Were there more things behind the scenes other than just the forward-facing? We disagree with your career?

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. I have watched a lot of people come into success from much less in a single generation, and they all have a very codified side 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 that narcissism, that self-centeredness, can end up really undoing people. And so there was plenty, behind the scenes. I think in very many ways, my brother and I were lucky, mainly because we were young boys. The fascination when we were younger, at least on the Disney channel, was of Miley and Selena and a lot of these girls because 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.

I think was... I think at the time was just coincidence. And as I've grown older, I feel very blessed to not have had that shown, but Yeah, we went through a lot. And I think it also has contributed to my conflict with this industry as I've grown up. Like the philosophy of continuing within acting has been definitely shaped by how I've watched people torn asunder by it.

I remember when you said earlier, 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 to be an actress. I want to be an actor. 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, 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 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, 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. Okay. My father's my best friend. Yeah. He's a really, really solid dude. And he had such a rough upbringing that I think he was able to recognize empathetically when my brother or I were going through something.

Can you give us an example? Take us back to you're in Zack and Cody, right? Sure. And you're going through it. You're working at Disney channel. What is your dad saying to you guys in those moments?

Funny enough, I get asked about Disney a lot because I think a lot of people want to poke the bear and see 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 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. 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. It's really intriguing. When you approach this career as a passion, and you're starting to learn the language of these major studios, and the language is always money, you start to become discontented. But if you start from a working kid background and you're like, Yeah, this is money, baby. 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 Everything they say. 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 think it's important if you're learning about someone's own history to know the historian and their background. This nepo baby argument, as an example, has been, in my opinion, something my brother and I have been talking about since we were kids, but has now just recently become a hot topic in the public.

And this is a major distinction. This nepotism or elitism has existed within the industry for a very long time. And I find it's a lot easier to complain about the philosophy of a boss, like I mentioned earlier, when you come from a position of privilege, where maybe you don't need the surplus as much as another child does.

You mentioned that when you got the sweet life of Zack and Cody, it was a lifeline. Because I was asking you, how would your dad keep you guys from going down that bad path? So prior to sweet 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 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 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. My father was in big support of this ball that was already rolling down the hill. You know what I mean? He was guiding us with a very gentle but firm hand towards a moral compass that I think was needed for who I am today. My brother and I, in very many ways, we tried to stay out of trouble.

We were a couple dorks that were far more interested in playing video games in Warhammer and our board game stuff with our friends than going out and partying and stuff. And we were I was 13 but looked eight. I was 16 and I looked 10. I had a bowl cut, and I looked like a little Dutch girl. It was incredible. And I think that kept us out of a lot of trouble.

It was phenomenal. Let me just say.

I'm going to 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. 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. I think if anyone knew the 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 It's a cortex, 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 sweet 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. My father Dylan and I, we moved to our own house a year afterwards. And that gave us the freedom and the base, the foundation in order to feel more at home and to lock in our private sphere of existence and to continue from there. But yeah, I'm not going to lie, the money was fucking great.

Can you take us through what was the day on set?

Yeah, it's awesome. It was great. I remember complaining around the water-cooler as a child, but I look back now as it was 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 would be our crew run through. So we would do the whole thing on the stage from front to back in front of the crew and the writers, and then they would take their Wednesday was a producer run through, so we'd have the execs from Disney come down, and they would watch the episode live as we were performing it on stage. 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 a great time. I can imagine how close you obviously are with your brother, the two of you, and because you said your characters were able to morph a little bit to your personality, you did have Barry to sing.

And vice versa. 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?

I was a fucking asshole on this, man. I was a really angry kid. I was a super angry kid. And I think in the most cliché way, angsty teen, angsty kid possible. I was atheist at the time, and I was doing all my dockons and hitchhikchins, and all the kids were Christians. So I was really getting off to the debates. And that's a fucking annoying kid. That's a really annoying kid. I'm sure you guys knew one of those dickheads back in the day. That was me.

You're poking the bear.

I was poking the bear.

So you weren't wearing one of the pure he rings?

Absolutely not. In fact, I was so vocally opposed to that stuff that everyone... I mean, the kids thought I was quite radioactive, as I recall. 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 the nature of all of us growing. But I saw Miley as an example. I think Jimmy Fallon a little while ago, and it was a really nice little reunion. It's high school friends that you graduate with, and you see them every once in a while, and 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 high school.

I guess if he's 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 the worst.

It was the worst. I'm saying to you that I was a total piece of shit.

When you look back at that version of yourself- I cringe.

I cringe hard because imagine, it's one thing if the guy looks cool. No, I had a bowl cut. That's horrible.

I remember watching the show and being so 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 fucking right. I wish you had just sat us down and been like, dude, get off this thing.

But I loved it. My brother had the same swoop bowl cut.

That was all the rage back then.

When were you finally done paying the bills for your family?

Oh, man. Three years Three years ago? Three years ago? When I hit success with Riverdale. I love my father very much. My father 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. I want to get my dad the fucking car he wants. I want to get my dad the house he wants. I want to make sure he's all good. It's just my father, my brother, and I in our family. So that makes it a little easier for financial stability. But yeah, I don't really mind. What else is it for? Once you realize the lifestyle you want to acquire financially, 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 don't you have a relationship with your mom?

Not at all. I mean, in truth, she lost her mind. I think it was the consequence of some weird alchemy of addiction and mental instability. 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 weird hieroglyphic text, some macabre Lovecraftian text that I try to decipher and try to pinpoint where she is. But We have a very, very challenged relationship. I think before she had been lost, whatever madness she's currently in now, she really believed 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 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 best of us. Yeah. Yeah. Huge wound. So I'm just a guy sitting in a boucle chair with some mommy issues. One of many of your guests, I'm sure.

Oh, I was going to say, sadly, it's like this is life, right? We all have our family shit. And I appreciate you sharing it because unfortunately, it's something that a lot of people experience. Where 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 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 setback.

Oh, yeah.

Not me, man. As we're getting so deep.

No, I'm fucking chill. I'm great. I'm good.

Let's get to the sex, Alex.

Fuck.

What's something that you've worked through?

Oh, I mean, public criticism, for sure. It's big. I'm a people pleaser. And 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 cacophony of criticism, and they don't ever hold themselves accountable for their own behavior as an individual contributing to a massive criticism, which I find to be completely ignorant. I know most artists I know hear the criticism. Almost all of them do, myself included.

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. 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 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 come into my own advanced adult feelings of sexuality and of my adulthood and my in life and all this stuff. I'm revealed to be, through whatever medium, a sinful, dirty, little hairless ape like the rest of us. 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 or being criticized for a humanity that I'd rarely try to show. Right. And this is such a woo- woo problem. But I don't know. I did take criticism quite hard for a long time, especially as an employee, but also as a child actor. I think that's something I've gotten over. I think 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 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 a huge proponent for cognitive behavioral therapy and psychiatry and all that 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, we have this image and this fall from grace, you and your brother, when you went to college, really removed yourself from all of it for a little bit?

Well, 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, like this juvenile thing. And then the world sees you as 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 a public 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 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, 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 It's not the kid anymore. And it's 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 solves the same issue to the public, but it didn't solve it within ourselves. The The publicity worked, but it didn't do the healing part. 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 I experienced that much of my early 20s after school because I got back into acting in the show. Riverdale took off overnight and reintroduced me to this buffet of decadency that I had. I had just as much potential as I did as a child to fuck up. So I think that stuff is really valuable if you're actually sitting with yourself and doing the work.

When you started talking about getting away from child acting, going to college, and trying to explore, it did make me think, obviously, about you and your sexuality. When did you start dating? How old were you when you had your first real relationship?

You want to hear about how I lost my virgin?

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 virgin. So this is still a bullcut guy, right? So if you guys are a 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 made out. And the second night, All my buddies had already lost her, Virginia, at this point. I was 14, so that's another thing. But we were down at the beach. It actually makes me nervous. It's so cringy. We were down at the beach. I knocked on her on hotel door. She came out. We went down to the beach, and we were on some Shay's louanges. I looked at her and I finally... My heart was beating like... I finally mustered up enough courage to deliver a line that my brother has never, ever let down for me. I looked at her and I was like, So are you DTF? And she goes, What? And I go, down to fuck. No. I was 14, okay? She looked at me and she was like, Sure.

So we went back to the hotel room. It's so cringy, but it's incredible. I look back now, it's so funny. 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. I was like, Dude, got to get out of the room, man. I've got I got a girl coming over. You got to 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 we pass each other, my mom 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 and I was like, I don't know. Go play chess or something. Oh. Yeah. Lasted about 20 seconds and never I'll never talk to her again. And after that, I became truly a serial monogamous. What? A serial monogamous. I went from long term relationship to long term relationship.

Pretty consistent. So the in and out moves 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. Well, actually, not only that embarrassing display. I actually love that story now. 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 got it out of the way. And that's not to say it needs to be, but for my own personal approach to it, I was like, eh.

Did you lose it before your brother?

I did.

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 serious A real 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 There's always a 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 And I dropped that after college. I got my first real girlfriend. I mean, I had one at 15, but that was just young love. And then my girlfriend in College. After that, I had come to terms with a lot of that stuff and was far more okay. But for years, that conversation around my recognizability made it quite hard for me to connect to people. I was never a one-night stand guy, ever. 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 not really I haven't really crossed that bridge.

And when you say you're super paranoid, do you think that spans past just relationships in general, just because of your career?

Oh, yeah. I think as I've gotten older, what I've really been trying to unpack is the distinction between my public and private life. My public life has been a mess of showing my awkward teen ears and all this stuff to the world. And 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 very much the product of my circumstances. Now, that is not a problem, literally at all anymore, because 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. Hold on. Emotionally, yes. Very, very much. And my first girlfriend, physically.

How do you find out about the emotional cheating?

Like everyone does.

Texting? Oh, yeah.

Oh, 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 I think I was also younger and stupid and not the I just partner her either. 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 now this is the first relationship where I can say, damn, I have real trust here.

Yeah. I was going to say not to put it all on you, Cole, but 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.

Open. I I've come to terms with my own inability to be emotionally vulnerable over time. And I don't blame. I literally don't blame any of my partners for anything that has happened. Ever, ever, ever. 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 some miscommunication on them is probably not doing the self-work. And in that way, I will say, yes. There's also, I think we've convoluted a lot of the modern romantic conversation, where sometimes it's just fundamental incompatibility. Totally. Sometimes you're just incompatible with someone, and you're trying to fucking grease a wheel that ain't broken. And it just 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 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, what would they say about you?

Probably most of my relationships 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 20s are for. Totally. I love it. We've had a very complicated relationship to a steak now in 2023. But most of us forget that your 20s are pretty much almost primarily all mistakes. Not mistakes, because 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 Narcistic, but also beautiful, and loving, and loyal, and caring. And I think as you get older, you tease out what makes you feel better and what doesn't make you feel better. And 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 I definitely think I learned a lot from those last relationships, for sure.

You're going to want to light the cigarette for this one. Great.

Thank you for giving me that.

You had a relationship with castmate on Riverdale. How did you navigate a breakup with someone that you work with?

It was really hard. 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 the way we felt about each other. 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. But I think that was exactly where we both needed to be. We were in a foreign city working a very intense schedule, 14 hours a day, oftentimes six days a week, 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. I think we did the best we could, really. I really do think we did. I'm very grateful in very many ways I was able to go through it with someone who is going through the exact same set of circumstances as me. But also in very many ways, all the clichés about dating someone you work with are very true.

Do you think it lasted longer because you were working together?

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. There was a lot of pressure towards other people, really. I think if I had loved myself a little more, I probably would have laughed 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 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 So afterwards, I was photographed 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, 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. I think all of us have aspirations to be a morally stand-up people. And when people go, Hey, that person's a fucking piece of shit, all of us are affected by that. I don't think that's a consequence of my youth or or anything any more than the next person. I just think 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. 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, 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. It's not a surprise. So I'm always... I don't like to say, oh, I split. It's not like, 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, which I think was good. But, yeah, you keep Don't want me on my mutual bullshit.

Mutual. I was like, that motherfucker, if he walks in here, no fucking-Yeah, you want the tea.

No, it's okay. I got 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, and we didn't speak again for two years. And by the time we met again, she was single. And it was very funny because 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 in life and stuff like that. And it was practically like a handshake agreement. And honestly, from that moment on, we didn't stop spending every day with one another. She's my best friend. We get along We're doing so well. We do everything together. The only reason I'm allowed on this show on Valentine's is because she loves you.

I fucking love it, Cole.

It's great. I'm like, Thank God. I'm earning major brownie points for her right now.

Oh, my God. You have to understand. She's like, Keep talking. She's going to watch this and be like...

When I told her 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 That's incredible.

Wow. That's incredible.

I honestly, I've never experienced this level of compatibility, and it makes me look back on my youth and go, well, you really didn't know.

Right.

Which is nuts. And as a consequence of our relationship, my life has just improved. I've gotten sober. I've questioned my existence in a way that I never have before. I've had my best financial years. My 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? How did you feel?

I don't know. When you're a kid, you don't really see anyone past 25. Yes. And everyone's 25. Even if they're 60, you're like, you're 25. When I was young, I thought by I would have it all worked out. 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. And my father was 27 when he had the two of us. 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 cliché, some Silver Lake cliché. And I was standing on the beach on the same sand that my father had stood on when he was 30, but two three-year-old twins were running around him when he was 30. And he had the same hair and the same puby facial hair. And we looked very similar. 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 in our generation than our parents' generation.

They were just fucking all gas, no breaks to pretty much every fucking thing that was happening in their life. They were like, Fuck it. I'm 22. It's time to have six fucking kids. And you're like, damn. I agree. All of us now, 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 most of us have a arrest 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 30s.

I cannot thank you enough for coming on. I feel like this was exciting for me because I've watched you for as 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 coming on. That's nice.

Thank you for letting me fill this studio with four cigarettes.

Yeah, I have an interview tomorrow. The person is like, what the fuck is that? What the fuck?

It's not me. It smells like an old lady's house in here.

Thank you for coming on, Cole.

Thank you for having me.