There's nothing sweeter than a mini Disney Channel reunion.
Ashley Tisdale gave fans major nostalgia after she posted a picture with former The Suite Life of Zack & Cody costar Dylan Sprouse.
The 38-year-old—who portrayed Maddie Fitzpatrick in the sitcom—shared a photo of herself and Dylan, who played Zack Martin, at a Rams game on her Instagram Story with the caption, "Ran into my little brother @dylansprouse I love you so much!!!"
For the Oct. 8 football game at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, Ashley and Dylan were all smiles, pressing their heads together for the snap and keeping it causal in a suite of their own.
Also in the sports box? Dylan's wife, Barbara Palvin, whom the Beautiful Disaster actor married in July. In a follow-up Instagram Story, Ashley helped Barbara celebrate her birthday, posting a video of Dylan and friends presenting the model with a cake as they sang "Happy Birthday."
But Ashley and Dylan's reunion doesn't mean fans should get their hopes up for the show—which aired 87 episodes from 2005 to 2008—to make a comeback on television. In fact, in 2020, Dylan's twin brother Cole Sprouse—who played Cody Martin—revealed why he doesn't think a revival is a good idea.
"I don't think it should be done if I'm being honest," he said on The Tonight Show at the time. "I think there's a huge potential to kind of demolish that perfect little golden memory of a program if you go back and you revive it."
The Riverdale alum then admitted to host Jimmy Fallon he's "not the biggest fan of the sequel and the spinoff thing."
"I think also, if enough time elapses, everyone who comes back to a program like that—they're not really in the same headspace," Cole continued. "So, to try and capture the same feeling that it was, in at least my childhood,...I don't know how it would feel. I think it would be enjoyable to find a way to do it that has a lot of respect and captures the feeling that people are actually desiring from that, but I don't know. I think it can be quite incendiary."
However, the 31-year-old was quick to chime in on why the series, which also got a spinoff, The Suite Life on Deck, was so loved by viewers.
Cole joked, "I would hope it had something to do with me."
And to learn some behind-the-scenes secrets from The Suite Life of Zack & Cody—which also starred Brenda Song—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.'"