Brenda Song Blasts Suite Life Pay: 'We Were Underpaid and Overworked'

Brenda Song didn't hold back on her Disney days. Appearing on former co-star Dylan Sprouse's Wildmen podcast, the Running Point star said the only hard part of her Suite Life run was feeling like the cast was 'underpaid and overworked.' She still gave Disney credit, saying the company 'did give us a platform to be sitting here right now.'

Song described the era as a memory void. 'There are parts of the Suite Life that are, like, black holes for me,' she told Sprouse. 'I don't remember years of my life.' Wildmen co-host Brendan Columbus said Phill Lewis, who played hotel manager Marion Moseby, has said the same about directing episodes — they're 'just gone.'

Song framed her own experience as deliberately un-dramatic. 'I have a boring tale. I didn't have this crazy, Oh my God, this was so — I had a lovely time,' she said. She also summed up the pay question bluntly: it felt like 'we paid them.'

The money talk didn't start with Song. Sprouse said on the podcast that the only residual check he ever received from The Suite Life of Zack & Cody was five cents, for a crossover episode with Hannah Montana. 'Imagine that,' he said, calling out a stretch when 'not a single paycheck' came in for 'arguably one of the most popular shows.'

Lewis and Sprouse also unpacked the show's 'wraparound episodes,' where they shot one scene from a future episode each week until a full episode was assembled. Asked whether it counted as a new episode, Sprouse said, 'Not for us!' Lewis alleged, 'We didn't get paid for it.'

The Hollywood Reporter said it reached out to Disney for comment and did not hear back. The franchise starred the Sprouse twins as Zack and Cody Martin, residents of the Tipton Hotel, with Song as heiress London Tipton, Lewis as Moseby and Ashley Tisdale as Maddie Fitzpatrick.