Brenda Song says the Disney Channel paid her too little and worked her too hard during “The Suite Life of Zack & Cody,” and recalls fainting on set when a hot tub heater malfunctioned. Song made the remarks on “Wildmen,” the podcast hosted by her former co-star Dylan Sprouse, according to TMZ. She described her years at the network as “lovely” overall. The one hardship, she said, was that the cast felt “underpaid and overworked.”
The worst moment came during a hot tub scene. As Song tells it, the heater ran far too hot, her chest grew warm and her breathing turned heavy. She wondered if she was having a panic attack before she lost consciousness. Sprouse joked that conditions must have been bad for Song to say anything, since she rarely complained. Song agreed, noting that when she does raise a grievance, she means it.
The two also turned to money. Song and Sprouse traded complaints about residuals, the payments performers receive when a show is rerun or streamed. Song said it sometimes felt as if the cast were paying Disney for the privilege of working there. Sprouse made a similar point earlier, telling Variety that the only residual check he had received for the series totaled five cents.
Song starred as London Tipton, the hotel heiress, when the series premiered in 2005. She reprised the character in the spinoff “The Suite Life on Deck,” which ran from 2008 to 2011, and the role made her one of the network’s best-known faces.
The comments fit a pattern in her recent public reflections on her Disney years. In 2025, she told an audience at the Bentonville Film Festival that the studio had blocked her from taking a part in Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino.” She added that it nearly interfered with her casting in “The Social Network.”
Her latest remarks, though, carry no accusation of bad faith. Song spoke warmly of the experience and framed her complaints as a matter of fair compensation and working conditions for child performers. A Disney response did not appear in the initial coverage.
