NEED TO KNOW
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Phill Lewis initially turned down his role in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody over pay
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Lewis said a role in the Disney Channel movie Dadnapped helped offset his weekly salary
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He recalled Dylan and Cole Sprouse handling comedy like seasoned performers at age 11
Phill Lewis says he initially turned down the role of Mr. Moseby on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.
While reuniting with former costar Dylan Sprouse on his Wildmen podcast, the 58-year-old actor reflected on the casting process.
“I get a call from my agent saying they’re doing a new show and they want you to come in and read for it because they loved what you did for Stuck in the Suburbs,” Lewis recalled. “I get the script, and it’s obviously the Moseby character. I go in and I read and they obviously like what I did.”
He was then asked to come in for a chemistry read with the mom character, which later went to Kim Rhodes.
“After the chemistry read, they said that they wanted to offer me the job, and then they told me how much they were going to pay me per week, and we said no,” he admitted.
Brenda Song and Phill Lewis in ‘The Suite Life of Zack and Cody’ in 2005
Credit: It’S A Laugh Productions/Walt Disney Tv/Kobal/Shutterstock
Lewis noted that he’s not “very expensive,” but said what they were offering was “crazy.”
So, he turned it down and decided to keep moving forward with Stuck in the Suburbs.
“They kept coming back, and they kept sweetening the deal, and they would go, ‘Well, all right. We’ll pay him this amount per week, but we’ll also throw in a movie,'” Lewis shared. “So I did Dadnapped, the movie Dadnapped for them, where they paid me a good chunk of change to kind of offset what they weren’t paying per week.”
Once he officially signed on to the show, Lewis met the rest of the cast — including Dylan and his twin brother, Cole Sprouse. Over 20 years later, he still remembers coming home from the table read and telling his wife, “Those two boys are f—ing funny.”
Despite being just 11 at the time, Cole and Dylan handled themselves like “veterans” who “knew comedy.” Lewis felt like the show “could survive” if it was “in the hands of Dylan and Cole.”
Dylan, 34, noted that Lewis was like a “father” on the show and “such a force” on set.
“I don’t think that [the] show would have felt like the family, nor would it have survived even two years without you because you were the father of the set and you were leading us through this in a way that was with such a begrudging joy, is what I would say,” the Beautiful Disaster actor shared.
“It really did feel like it was possible,” he added.
Dylan noted that Lewis impacted his life long after the show ended in 2008.
“Part of the reason I was so excited to have you in here today, Phill, is because I do feel like, in a time where… both my brother and I, our lives were in a lot of disarray when we started the show,” Dylan explained, noting that they “didn’t know if we wanted to act again when the show ended.”
The twins then took a break from acting to attend college, but Dylan said the “thing that continuously drove me into thinking I wanted to get back into acting was truly the time that I spent learning and acting alongside you.”
While Dylan noted that he and his brother may have had “some inherent [acting] chops,” he noted that the show “would be nothing without Phill Lewis.”
“It really wouldn’t be, and I love you so much, and I’m so happy that you came in and joined us on this pod so we can chat about it,” Dylan shared. “I will always be your number one fan.”
Read the original article on People
