Former Disney child star Cole Sprouse says 'fame is trauma,' warns of 'psychological effects' on young adults
Dean Buscher/The CW
- Before starring in "Riverdale" and "Moonshot" Cole Sprouse was a child actor on Disney.
- Sprouse told The New York Times that it's not true that he survived child fame "unscathed."
- He said every child actor is impacted by fame and called fame a "trauma."
Cole Sprouse called criticism of child actors who are said to have spiraled 'out of control' as unfair, and described fame as torture, in an interview with The New York Times published on Monday.
Sprouse, who alongside his twin brother Dylan, rose to fame on the Disney show "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody" told the Times that it's not really possible to go through childhood fame and come out "unscathed"
"My brother and I used to get quite a bit of, "Oh, you made it out! Oh, you're unscathed!" No," Sprouse said.
The actor now known for his role on "Riverdale" and is the lead in the new HBO Max rom-com "Moonshot" told the Times that it's not fair to compare his experience to that of young women who were on Disney Channel.
"The young women on the channel we were on [Disney Channel] were so heavily sexualized from such an earlier age than my brother and I that there's absolutely no way that we could compare our experiences. And every single person going through that trauma has a unique experience. When we talk about child stars going nuts, what we're not actually talking about is how fame is a trauma," he said.
Sprouse said that's why he's "violently defensive" against people who mock the experiences of those young women.
"To be quite honest, as I have now gone through a second big round of this fame game as an adult, I've noticed the same psychological effects that fame yields upon a group of young adults as I did when I was a child," he said, adding that he thinks people can hide it better as adults.