{"id":912949,"date":"2026-11-11T00:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T00:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/912949\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T00:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T00:06:11","slug":"brenda-song-says-she-felt-underpaid-overworked-on-disneys-suite-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/912949\/","title":{"rendered":"Brenda Song Says She Felt ‘Underpaid, Overworked’ on Disney’s Suite Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBrenda Song<\/a> is reflecting on her time as a child actor, admitting that she felt \u201cunderpaid and overworked\u201d while working on Disney<\/a>\u2018s The Suite Life shows. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Running Point star appeared on her former co-star Dylan Sprouse<\/a>\u2018s Wildmen<\/a> podcast, where they recalled working on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody franchise for Disney, and its subsequent spinoff The Suite Life on Deck.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been curious to ask you about this,\u201d Song said to Sprouse. \u201cI feel like there are parts of the Suite Life that are, like, black holes for me. Like, I don\u2019t remember years of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWildmen co-host Brendan Columbus recounted a recent episode of the podcast they did with Phill Lewis, noting, \u201cPhill said he forgot directing episodes. It was like, he\u2019s like, \u2018They\u2019re just gone.\u2019 He\u2019ll watch them again. Just have no recollection.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSong said looking back on her time on the Disney Channel series, it felt like \u201cwe paid them.\u201d She added, \u201cI always say this about my time at Disney, I know everybody has their own journey\u2026 I always say, like, I have a boring tale. I didn\u2019t have this crazy, like, \u2018Oh my God, this was so \u2014 I had a lovely time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actress admitted that \u201cthe only thing that was hard about that time was I feel like we were underpaid and overworked.\u201d Song added, \u201cBut Disney did give us a platform to be sitting here right now, so it\u2019s very hard to complain about certain things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Hollywood Reporter reached out to Disney for comment, but did not hear back.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Sprouse twins starred in Disney\u2019s Suite Life shows as onscreen twins Cody and Zack Martin who lived in the Tipton Hotel. Song starred as London Tipton, daughter of hotel owner Wilfred Tipton; Lewis portrayed Marion Moseby, the manager of the hotel. Ashley Tisdale also starred in the show as Maddie Fitzpatrick, London\u2019s friend and a Tipton Hotel employee.<\/p>\n

\n\tSprouse recently revealed on his podcast<\/a> that he\u2019s received only one residual check for five cents from his time working on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe only residual check I\u2019ve ever received for The Suite Life at all was a crossover episode with Hannah Montana for five cents. I\u2019m not joking,\u201d he said. \u201cImagine that. In a time where residuals would have been great, not a single paycheck for being arguably one of the most popular shows.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring that same episode of Sprouse\u2019s podcast, he and Phill Lewis recalled shooting \u201cwraparound episodes,\u201d in which they\u2019d film an additional scene from a future episode each week.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA wraparound episode was we\u2019d shoot our episode for the week and then they would say, \u2018OK, we\u2019re going to shoot this scene from an episode that you\u2019re going to shoot in two weeks,\u2019 and we\u2019re like, \u2018OK.\u2019 So we shoot that scene. Then the next week they go, \u2018You\u2019re gonna shoot this scene from the same ep.\u2019 And what they were doing was they were compiling an episode by shooting a scene a week, and then putting it together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen asked if it \u201ccounted\u201d as a new episode, Sprouse said, \u201cNot for us!\u201d Lewis alleged, \u201cWe didn\u2019t get paid for it. We weren\u2019t paid for that episode.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brenda Song is reflecting on her time as a child actor, admitting that she felt \u201cunderpaid and overworked\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":912950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[381465,3716,258513,88,381466,92],"class_list":["post-912949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-brenda-song","tag-disney","tag-dylan-sprouse","tag-entertainment","tag-the-suite-life-of-zack-cody","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=912949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/912949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/912950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=912949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=912949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=912949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}