The Suite Life of Zack and Cody is a popular television show that aired on Disney Channel in the early 2000s. The show is primarily about twin brothers, Zack and Cody Martin, and what life is like living in the Tipton Hotel in Boston, MA. Zack and Cody are always getting into trouble, which sometimes involves their friends, London Tipton, the ditzy, rich daughter of the hotel owner and Maddie Fitzpatrick, the smart candy-counter girl. The boys usually get into trouble with Mr. Moseby, the hotel’s manager, but they always seem to find a clever way out of it.
Premise
The 12-year-old twin brothers Zack and Cody Martin, who reside in Boston’s opulent Tipton Hotel while their mother Carey plays in the hotel lounge, are the series’ main characters. At their home, the identical twins frequently get into trouble. The show also features Maddie Fitzpatrick, the candy counter girl at the hotel, London Tipton, the owner of the hotel and her teenage daughter, and Mr. Moseby, the hotel manager, who frequently stands in the way of Zack and Cody’s plots.
In addition to the Tipton Hotel, the show also frequently takes place at Zack and Cody’s school, Cheevers High, and Maddie and London’s exclusive Catholic school, Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. Zack and Cody frequently run into difficulties and devise solutions to get out of them. The third season of the program also takes place at the Paul Revere Mini Mart, where Zack and Cody are employed, and Camp Heaven on Earth, where Maddie is employed.
Characters
Main
- Cole Sprouse’s character, Cody Martin, is the older and wiser twin. He gets “straight A’s”s in school. It was shown in the first season of the program that Cody is the kinder twin than his brother and that he mysteriously always agrees to follow Zack’s plans.
- The self-centered, extroverted older twin Zack Martin (Dylan Sprouse) typically dresses in skater and baggy-camo clothing.
- The sole child of Wilfred Tipton, proprietor of the Tipton Hotel, is London Tipton (Brenda Song). London, a teenage girl with a private suite at the Boston Tipton Hotel, is there. London only dresses in luxury clothing because she adores it. Yay Me! is the name of her web series. London Tipton is the star.
- The adolescent candy counter employee at the Tipton Hotel and London’s best friend is Maddie Fitzpatrick (Ashley Tisdale). As a result of being from a lower-class household, Maddie is a diligent worker, an independent thinker, and an intellectual person.
- The austere and stuffy manager of the Tipton Hotel, Marion Moseby (Phill Lewis), uses a wide vocabulary and an urbane vernacular and is frequently irritated by Zack and Cody’s ideas. Mr. Moseby serves as London’s father figure because Mr. Tipton is rarely present.
- Zack and Cody’s single working mother, Carey Martin (Kim Rhodes). She performs at the hotel’s lounge. Before landing at the Boston Tipton Hotel, she and her sons visited many other places. Kurt Martin, her husband, and she split following the birth of the twins for an undisclosed cause.
Recurring
- The hotel bellhop, Esteban Ramirez (Adrian R’Mante).
- Aspire-to-be inventor and hotel janitor Arwin Hawkhauser (Brian Stepanek).
Production
The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, starring Dylan and Cole Sprouse, Brenda Song, Ashley Tisdale, Phill Lewis, and Kim Rhodes, made its debut in March 2005. The performers were referred to as an ensemble cast by Gary Marsh, president of Disney Channels Worldwide. In a live studio audience in Hollywood, the show was filmed. It is Laugh Productions, founded by Danny Kallis and Jim Geoghan, produced the television show.
Five more episodes were requested during the first season’s production, increasing the total to 26.
After completing 65 episodes, the show was revived for a third season in November 2006. The resumption of production was planned for January 2007.
Crazy Facts!
1. Before eventually opting to give the performers alternate names for their characters, producers first contemplated using Dylan and Cole Sprouse as names for the Martin twins.
2. Dylan and Cole resembled their respective personalities in that Dylan was the problematic twin (like Zack, who causes problems), while Cole was the more studious twin (like the more responsible Cody).
3. The idea for the program originally occurred to creators Jim Geoghan and Danny Kallis when they were working on the sitcom Silver Spoons, as Kallis confessed to the New York Times.
4. Initially, Brenda Song read for Maddie, the caustic teenager who lives next door and works as the clerk, and Ashley Tisdale auditioned for London Tipton, the flighty hotel heiress a la Paris Hilton.
According to Song, “They were going full, true Paris Hilton parody.” Hollywood was not doing that back then, so when we read for the roles, they said, “No, actually, you guys switch parts.”
5. Brenda was 15 when she secured the part of London and also got an early admittance to Harvard University, her ideal institution. She received encouragement to pursue acting from her father, a teacher, who told her: “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. Ashley, who is naturally brunette, had her hair-colored blonde for the show.
7. Zac Efron, Ashley’s co-star in High School Musical and closest friend, appeared as a guest star, and she revealed that their kiss was “the worst” since he is like “a brother” to her. Additionally, he attempted a tongue kiss.
She told Elle, “I was like, ‘Get away from me!’ I closed my mouth so quickly. I thought, ‘This is Disney Channel, we don’t kiss like that!’
8. Alert for another uncomfortable kiss! When Selena Gomez appeared as the twins’ classmate Gwen in a guest role in 2006, they shared their first kiss. On The Kelly Clarkson Show, Gomez said that she had a crush on Cole before to being cast, saying, “It was my first kiss—[and] on-camera! It was one of the worst days of my life.” I was enamored with that show and believed we would get together.
9. When producers chose British identical twins Becky and Milly Rosso from the audience to portray the lads’ love interests, Janice and Jessica, they were simply spectators.
“[The executive producer] heard that we were English and that we were twins, and she asked us to audition for the show,” Milly said in an interview with KidzWorld. We spent many months taking acting classes before trying out for a role in a single episode. Because of the way we portrayed the characters, they decided to cast us in seven episodes.
10. The New York Post said that Dylan and Cody, both 17 at the time, were earning $20,000 each episode. According to one agent quoted in the article, during the beginning of the show, “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. For the final episode of the medical comedy Scrubs, Phill Lewis, who portrayed Mr. Moseby, the beloved hotel manager, returned to the set with two super-fans. According to him, “I brought Dylan and Cole along with me to the set that day,” he told Jim Hill Media. They were huge Scrubs fans, so they were overjoyed to be present with me when the show’s run came to an end.
12. Arwin Hochauser, the hotel engineer on Suite Life (Brian Stepanek), was the focus of a spinoff for Disney Channel that starred Selena. At Arwin! She would have portrayed Arwin’s niece in either Housebroken or House, but the network finally opted against the project in 2007, giving her more time to appear in Wizards of Waverly Place.
13. Dylan gained notoriety when he revealed that the twins had approached Disney about producing a fourth season of The Suite Life on Deck while also launching a brand-new show to keep the crew they had been working with for years employed while they attended college.
According to Dylan, who spoke to Vulture, “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 setup for a new show’.”
14. The idea was for Zack and Cody to go back to Boston and coach a young child staying at the hotel, allowing him to have his program. However, Dylan claims that the Sprouses left when Disney rejected their proposal and then returned to them with a similar one that was set in Miami and starring Selena Gomez.
15. Alyson Stoner, who portrayed the recurring character Max, admitted she and Cole had a short romance on the program in 2016.
She recalled their first affair when they were both 11 years old: “The first boy, I guess, that I had like a crush on and dated was Cole Sprouse,” she stated on The Nighttime Show. (Watch Cole pull her into the middle of an on-set interview when questioned about whether he has a girlfriend in the next video.)
Unfortunately, she disclosed that he dumped her on her birthday. He simply stated, “It won’t work out.”
16. In Season 3, Episode 17, London & Maddie’s charming Latin fencing teacher is played by actor Justin Baldoni (“Foiled Again”). However, Tony Hawk, a pro skateboarder, also makes an appearance in this episode.
17. Mr. Tipton hides behind his security guards during the show, and he doesn’t make a personal appearance until the spin-off program “Suite Life on Deck.”
18. Cole Sprouse said he’s frequently asked if he and his brother Dylan would ever do a Suite Life reboot, and he always replies, “No, absolutely not.” He explained that this is because when popular shows are modernized, it can potentially alienate the original fanbase, which is something he didn’t want to happen.